The behavioral impact of baroreflex function: A review

Abstract

The baroreflex consists of a negative feedback loop adjusting heart activity to blood pressure fluctuations. This review is concerned with interactions between baroreflex function and behavior. In addition to changes in baroreflex cardiac control subject to behavioral manipulations, interindividual differences in reflex function predicted psychological and central nervous features. The sensitivity of the reflex was inversely related to cognitive performance, evoked potential amplitudes, experimental pain sensitivity, and the severity of clinical pain. Possible variables moderating the strength of the associations are tonic blood pressure, gender, and psychiatric disease. It is suggested that these observations reflect inhibition of higher brain function by baroreceptor afferents. While in many cases increased baroreflex function implies stronger inhibition, individual and situational factors modulate the behavioral impact of cardiac regulation.

Physiological Correlates of Bipolar Spectrum Disorders and their Treatment

“…Studies of BSDs suggest that low HRV are correlated with BSD traits. This is important given that low HRV is associated with poor mental and physical health and psychological flexibility in the face of stress, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and mental disorder, and overall morbidity and mortality (see Duschek et al 2013;Kemp and Quintana 2013). Studies suggest that euthymic patients have higher HR (Iacono et al 1983) and lower HRV (Cohen et al 2003;Lee et al 2012) at rest than controls, reflecting disturbed capacity to adapt and regulate autonomic arousal.…”

“…The cardiovascular findings of the increased HR and decreased HRV characterizing BSD phases would expect to be normalized with effective treatment. For example, lithium is known to decrease depolarization at the sinoatrial node of the heart (Chong et al 2001); thus, it could be predicted that lithium administration increases HRV, in the context of the wider literature (Duschek et al 2013;see Lopes and White 2006). However, no study has directly investigated this possibility.…”

“…In terms of peripheral physiological measures, cardiovascular measures including heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) gathered using electrocardiography (ECG), and galvanic skin response (GSR) have been widely employed. Within these, HR is a measure of overall ANS arousal (see Duschek et al 2013;Lopes and White 2006) under tonic inhibitory control by the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS ;Saul 1990;Thayer et al 2009), high frequency HRV measures PNS activity (see Duschek et al 2013;Lopes and White 2006), and galvanic skin response (GSR) measures reflect sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity (see Dawson et al 2007). Notably, only GSR has been employed in combination with other measures for multimodal investigations.…”

“…Eight studies have examined cardiovascular measures and suggest that BSDs are associated with a higher heart rate (HR), reflecting increased arousal and reduced PNS function (see Duschek et al 2013;Lopes and White 2006) can characterize BSDs. This is important as high resting HR is associated with an increased risk of suicide (Lemogne et al 2011), which may be related to high suicidality in BSDs (Nock et al 2009).…”

“…Studies further suggest that lower HRV can characterize BSDs under tonic and phasic conditions. High frequency HRV measures reflects activity within the PNS branch of the ANS (see Duschek et al 2013;Lopes and White 2006). PNS activity at the heart during emotional responding is associated with engagement of executive PFC control on the limbic system, and thus afferent and efferent brainstem nuclei linked to the heart (Duschek et al 2013).…”