Autonomic blockade does not prevent learned heart rate attenuation during exercise

Each of three monkeys was operantly conditioned to slow its heart, to exercise (lift weights) and to attenuate the tachycardia of exercise by combining these two skills. Each was further tested during beta-adrenergic blockade (atenolol), combined alpha-adrenergic blockade (prazosin) and beta-adrenergic blockade, or cholinergic blockade (methylatropine). During all experiments heart rate, stroke volume, intraarterial blood pressure, O2 consumption, and CO2 production were recorded on a beat-to-beat basis. Each animal was able to attenuate the tachycardia of exercise under each of the drug conditions, indicating that "central command" is not the expression of fixed, cardiovascular and pulmonary reflexes elicited by somato-motor commands, but rather is an adaptive behavior, determined by environmental contingencies and mediated by cardiovascular and pulmonary as well as somato-motor commands. The ability of the animals to perform with greater cardiac efficiency during the combined exercise and heart rate slowing task relative to the exercise-only task was not affected by sympathetic blockade; however, parasympathetic blockade did reduce cardiac efficiency.