Neural Control of Cardiac Function, Rhythm, and Contraction

Abstract

This literature review discusses how researchers can control cardiac cells with neural networks. The cardiac system is controlled by the autonomic nervous system and coordinates with the respiratory system. Numerous approaches evaluate the efficiency, malfunction, and abnormalities of this connection between brain and heart, through computational analysis, with pharmacological influences, and with physiological analysis. In Roger A. L. Dampney’s paper, he discusses how the connection between the nervous system and cardiovascular system is achieved through feedforward and feedback regulation to maintain homeostasis, while Y. Zhong et al. takes a more dynamic approach and manipulates the patients into supine and upright positions while administering the drug, atropine, which involuntarily blocks the nervous system from working. Lastly, X. Chen et al. derived new PNS and SNS indexes by multisignal analysis of cardiorespiratory variability using transfer functions and a combination of physiological and pharmacological experiments. He selected autonomic nervous system blockers to analyze the beta-sympathetic nervous system and its overlap with the parasympathetic nervous system. He sought to find where these systems overlap in low frequency bands and offer specific measurements of the cardiac autonomic nervous system due to inputs from heart rate. Overall, the purpose of the literature review is to study the techniques that are being used in research to evaluate the relationship between the nervous system and cardiovascular system. The literature review will range from computational analysis to physiological experiments and include the analysis of pharmacological influences on mediating the ANS. In the Introduction, I will explain some of the terminology that is necessary to understand the experiments that follow