Canning, Brendan J. Reflex regulation of airway smooth muscle tone. J Appl Physiol 101: 971–985, 2006. doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00313.2006.—Autonomic nerves in most mammalian species mediate both contractions and relaxations of airway smooth muscle. Cholinergic-parasympathetic nerves mediate contractions, whereas adrenergic-sympathetic and/or noncholinergic parasympathetic nerves mediate relaxa...

In a recent study, we demonstrated that transmission from peripheral sympathetic nerves to vascular smooth muscles is strongest in the frequency band from 0.2 to 0.5 Hz in conscious rats. In contrast, sympathetic modulation of vasomotor tone in humans is suggested to be reflected in the power spectrum of arterial blood pressure in a frequency range centered around ∼0.1 Hz. Therefore, we address...

Major nerve trunks that supply abdominal viscera contain axons of postganglionic neurons that originate in the coeliac ganglion, superior mesenteric ganglion, inferior mesenteric ganglia, hypogastric nerve ganglia and the sympathetic chain ganglia. Using the retrogradely transported neuronal marker Fast Blue, we mapped the distribution of labelled nerve cells after application of the dye to eit...

Background. Adenosine is an effective hypotensive agent in experimental animals and in anesthetized patients, producing little if any evidence of reflex sympathetic activation. In contrast, adenosine increases systolic blood pressure and heart rate in conscious subjects. To determine whether this response is related to sympathetic activation, we studied the cardiovascular and respiratory effect...

Autonomic nerves in most mammalian species mediate both contractions and relaxations of airway smooth muscle. Cholinergic-parasympathetic nerves mediate contractions, whereas adrenergic-sympathetic and/or noncholinergic parasympathetic nerves mediate relaxations. Sympathetic-adrenergic innervation of human airway smooth muscle is sparse or nonexistent based on histological analyses and plays li...

Many of the blood vessels of the extremities are under reflex control. Numerous stimuli, such as cooling the body, pain, loud noise, or deep inspiration, produce reflex vasoconstriction. Heating the body causes reflex vasodilatation. The fact that either preor post-ganglionic sympathectomy eliminates these vasoconstrictor and vasodilator responses demonstrates that the sympathetic nerves contai...

This study was designed to determine whether physiological activation of sympathetic pathways affects cerebral blood flow (CBF) and the integrity of the blood-brain barrier during hypertension. Increased sympathetic activity was induced in anesthetized cats by sinoaortic deafferentation (SAD), a procedure that results in acute, severe neurogenic hypertension. Sympathetic innervation of one cere...

1. Evidence from animal studies indicates that circulating adrenaline may be taken up into sympathetic nerves, facilitating the release of noradrenaline. To test whether adrenaline acts as a co-transmitter in humans we studied eight healthy men (aged 19-23 years) during isometric handgrip before and after an adrenaline infusion (1-3 micrograms/min for > 30 min). Sympathetic activity was assesse...

The close apposition between sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve terminals in the adventitia of cerebral arteries provides morphological evidence that sympathetic nerve activation causes parasympathetic nitrergic vasodilation via a sympathetic-parasympathetic interaction mechanism. The decreased parasympathetic nerve terminals in basilar arteries (BA) of spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) a...

The sympathetic nervous system is an important determinant of vascular function. The effects of the sympathetic nervous system are mediated via release of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides from postganglionic sympathetic neurons. The present study tests the hypothesis that vascular smooth muscle cells (VSM) maintain adrenergic neurotransmitter/neuropeptide expression in the postganglionic sym...