Baroreflex resetting of human sympathetic action potential subpopulations during exercise

Abstract

This study tested the hypothesis that during fatiguing volitional exercise in humans, descending cortical signals and ascending skeletal muscle metaboreflex signals exert divergent control over baroreflex resetting of sympathetic action potential (AP) discharge. We quantified the baroreflex gain for sympathetic AP clusters within the muscle sympathetic nerve activity neurogram (peroneal microneurography and continuous wavelet transform) during baseline (BSL), the first 2-min of a 5-min isometric handgrip (20% of maximal effort; IHG1), the last 2-min of IHG (IHG2), and during postexercise circulatory occlusion (PECO) in seven healthy participants. AP baroreflex threshold gain was measured as the slope of the linear relationship between AP probability (%) versus diastolic blood pressure (DBP; mmHg) for 10 normalized AP clusters. Compared with BSL, during IHG1, AP baroreflex threshold functions were only reset to greater DBP and baroreflex gain was unaffected. Compared with BSL, during IHG2 and PECO, baroreflex functions were reset to greater DBP and to greater AP firing probabilities, with medium-sized APs demonstrating the largest upward resetting (e.g., cluster 3 BSL: 26 ± 7%, cluster 3 IHG2: 78 ± 22%, cluster 3 PECO: 88 ± 46%). Compared with BSL, AP baroreflex threshold gain was not different during IHG2 but was increased during PECO, with medium-sized APs demonstrating the largest increase in baroreflex gain (e.g., cluster 3 BSL: -6.31 ± 3.1%/mmHg, cluster 3 IHG2: -6.18 ± 5.4%/mmHg, cluster 3 PECO: -12.13 ± 6.5%/mmHg). These findings indicate that during IHG exercise, descending cortical signaling and ascending skeletal muscle metaboreceptor signals differentially affect baroreflex resetting of subpopulations of human muscle sympathetic postganglionic neurons.