ARTERIAL BAROREFLEX CONTROL OF CARDIAC AND RENAL SYMPATHETIC-NERVE ACTIVITIES IS UNIFORM IN FREQUENCY-DOMAIN

To investigate wideband dynamic properties of arterial baroreflex control of cardiac and renal sympathetic nerve activities, we assessed the transfer function using a "white-noise technique." In pentobarbital sodium-anesthetized cats, we simultaneously recorded, as the output, cardiac sympathetic nerve activity (CSNA) and renal sympathetic nerve activity (RSNA), while aortic pressure (AP) was randomly perturbed to impose input pressure changes with broad frequencies. We calculated the transfer function from AP to CSNA or to RSNA over the frequency range of 0.01-5 Hz through the spectral analysis of the input and output. We found that the gain, phase shift, and coherence of those transfer functions were statistically indistinguishable. The gain was rather flat below 0.05 Hz, steadily increased above 0.05 Hz, and plateaued above 0.3 Hz. The phase shift was out of phase up to 0.05 Hz and led by approximately 4-degrees above 0.05 Hz. The coherence was high (above 0.7) below 0.3 Hz and became lower above 0.3 Hz. These results suggest that arterial baroreflex control is uniform and similar between the two activities in the frequency range of 0.01-0.7 Hz.