Closed-loop identification of carotid sinus baroreflex open-loop transfer characteristics in rabbits

In the circulatory system, a change in blood pressure operates through the baroreflex to alter sympathetic efferent nerve activity, which in turn affects blood pressure. Existence of this closed feedback loop makes it difficult to identify the baroreflex open-loop transfer characteristics by means of conventional frequency domain approaches. Although several investigators have demonstrated the advantages of the time domain approach using parametric models such as the autoregressive moving average model, specification of the model structure critically affects their results. Thus we investigated the applicability of a nonparametric closed-loop identification technique to the carotid sinus baroreflex system by using an exogenous perturbation according to a binary white-noise sequence. To validate the identification method, we compared the transfer functions estimated by the closed-loop identification with those estimated by open-loop identification. The transfer functions determined by the two identification methods did not differ statistically in their fitted parameters. We conclude that exogenous perturbation to the baroreflex system enables us to estimate the open-loop baroreflex transfer characteristics under closed-loop conditions.