A comparative study of normal and abnormal blood pressures among university students, including the cold-pressor test

Retention in a warm environment of adaptation to localized cooling

“…The slight delay before maximal responses of the blood pressure were obtained during immersions of a hand in cold water ( Fig. 1 and Table 1) corresponds to earlier findings (Thacker, 1940;Wolff, 1951) and reasons have been given above why this should happen. The diminution of pain and of general circulatory responses after repeated immersions at intervals of 60 sec must have been largely of peripheral origin, and due to adaptation of the peripheral receptors, or to a progressive diminution of the temperature gradient as the hand became colder (Wolf & Hardy, 1941;Hensel, 1952), but retention of information by the central nervous system may also have played some part in it (see below).…”

Psychophysiology of Blood Pressure*

“…The mean score of the Controls is 16.45 greater than that of the Experimentals, in the direction of greater annoyability of Control subjects. 20. 20.…”

Sympathetic activation during the cold pressor test: influence of stimulus area

“…The local application of cold (i.e. cold pressor test) has been used both clinically and experimentally to evoke increases in arterial blood pressure (Hines & Brown, 1932;Thacker, 1940;Greene et al, 1965;Cuddy et af., 1966;Victor et al, 1987a). Recently, it was shown that this stimulus produces marked increases in sympathetic nerve activity to skeletal muscle (MSNA), the magnitude of which is highly and positively correlated with the corresponding increase in mean arterial pressure (Victor et al, 1987a).…”

“…It has been reported that the cardiovascular-autonomic adjustments to the cold pressor test are influenced by several factors including the duration (Greene et al, 1965;Winer & Carter, 1977;Musgrave et al, 1984) and the temperature (Hilgard et al, 1974) of the stimulus, the baseline blood pressure of the subject (Hines & Brown, 1932, 1936Thacker, 1940), and the level of the analgesia (Hilgard et af., 1974), but not by body position (Thacker, 1940). In an early publication, Hines & Brown (1932) stated that the immersion of more than one extremity in ice water elicits increases in systolic and diastolic arterial pressure which are similar to that observed with the immersion of a single hand; however, no actual data were presented to support their contention.…”