PROPERTIES OF PUTATIVE CARDIAC AND NONCARDIAC NEURONS IN THE RAT STELLATE GANGLION

Intracellular recordings were made from isolated left or right stellate ganglia of Wistar rats and the morphology of neurones studied after intracellular injection of hexammine cobaltic chloride or back-filling from the post-ganglionic nerve with cobalt lysine complex. The experiments attempted to identify the location, electrophysiological properties, morphology and chemosensitivity of putative cardiac neurones in the ganglion. These were identified by antidromic activation of the axon in a cardiac nerve and compared with neurones projecting towards the brachial plexus (non-cardiac neurones). Putative cardiac neurones were localized in the ganglion around the postganglionic nerve entry zone and showed considerable morphological diversity. They had complex dendritic trees with, on average, seven dendrites. They included both phasic and tonic neurones and were depolarized by muscarinic agonists, angiotensin and substance P; they invariably had a synaptic input from the sympathetic trunk and from a T-1 or T-2 ramus and, in 16% of cells, from a cardiac nerve. Non-cardiac neurones were more widely scattered through the stellate ganglion but were not clearly different in morphology, resting membrane potential or the proportion of phasic and tonic cells from putative cardiac neurones. They also showed depolarizing responses to muscarinic agonists, angiotensin and substance P. Angiotensin responses of stellate ganglion cells were blocked by the peptide antagonist, saralasin (1 mu M).