Response of primate heart to emotional stress before and after cardiac denervation

Eleven chair-restrained rhesus monkeys were classically conditioned to a 1-min, 900-Hz tone (CSf) followed by food and a 1-min, 3.4-5Hz tone (CSs) followed by shock. Each conditional stimulus produced large, sudden, and highly significant (P less than .01) increases in left ventricular systolic pressure (LVP), its first time derivative (d(LVP)/dt), and heart rate (HR). The animal's hearts were sugically denervated following control studies of the conditional responses. Two to four weeks later, these responses were reexamined by again presenting CSf and CSs to five surviving monkeys following a format identical to that used in the control experiments. Complete cardiac denervation virtually eliminated the sudden increases in each of the measured variables. Denervation also "unmasked" small-magnitude, delayed chronotropic and inotropic responses during CSs (but not CSf). These effects were ascribed to the action of circulating catecholamines known to be secreted during "emotional" stress. Four monkeys studied for 6 mo or more postoperatively showed evidence for varying degrees of cardiac reinnervation. Loss of nervous control of the nonhuman primate heart greatly compromises the cardiovascular response to these environmental and behavioral stress situations.