Abstract
Cardiac neural control requires dynamic adaptation of mechanical and electrical indices to meet blood flow demands. The control system receives inputs to coordinate cardiac function, producing “functional” outputs such as blood pressure and heart rate. Bilateral stellate ganglia (SG) integrate inputs and produce efferent cardiopulmonary sympathetic outputs. We investigate network processing of cardiopulmonary transduction by SG neuronal populations in porcine with chronic pacing-induced heart failure and control subjects during extended in-vivo extracellular microelectrode recordings. We derive network-level spatiotemporal dynamic signatures based on linking neuronal population cofluctuation and examine differences in “neural specificity” of SG network activity to cardiac cycle phases. Information processing and cardiac control in chronic heart failure by the SG, relative to controls, exhibits: i) more frequent, short-lived, high magnitude cofluctuations, ii) greater variation in neural specificity to cardiac cycles, and iii) neural network activity and cardiac control linkage that depends on disease state and cofluctuation magnitude.
Competing Interest Statement
University of California, Los Angeles has patents relating to cardiac neural diagnostics and therapeutics. Dr. Ajijola is a co-founder of NeuCures, Inc. The remaining authors have no additional disclosures to report.
