The amount of compensatory sweating depends on the patient, the damage that the white rami communicans incurs, and the amount of cell body reorganization in the spinal cord after surgery.
Other potential complications include inadequate resection of the ganglia, gustatory sweating, pneumothorax, cardiac dysfunction, post-operative pain, and finally Horner’s syndrome secondary to resection of the stellate ganglion.
www.ubcmj.com/pdf/ubcmj_2_1_2010_24-29.pdf

After severing the cervical sympathetic trunk, the cells of the cervical sympathetic ganglion undergo transneuronic degeneration
After severing the sympathetic trunk, the cells of its origin undergo complete disintegration within a year.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0442.1967.tb00255.x/abstract

Thursday, June 4, 2009

integration of somatosensory and phasic baroreceptor information at cortical, limbic and brainstem levels

Following one's heart: cardiac rhythms gate central initiation of sympathetic reflexes.

Gray MA, Rylander K, Harrison NA, Wallin BG, Critchley HD.

Clinical Imaging Sciences Centre, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of Sussex, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 9RR, United Kingdom. m.a.gray@bsms.ac.uk

Central nervous processing of environmental stimuli requires integration of sensory information with ongoing autonomic control of cardiovascular function. Rhythmic feedback of cardiac and baroreceptor activity contributes dynamically to homeostatic autonomic control. We examined how the processing of brief somatosensory stimuli is altered across the cardiac cycle to evoke differential changes in bodily state. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging of brain and noninvasive beat-to-beat cardiovascular monitoring, we show that stimuli presented before and during early cardiac systole elicited differential changes in neural activity within amygdala, anterior insula and pons, and engendered different effects on blood pressure. Stimulation delivered during early systole inhibited blood pressure increases. Individual differences in heart rate variability predicted magnitude of differential cardiac timing responses within periaqueductal gray, amygdala and insula. Our findings highlight integration of somatosensory and phasic baroreceptor information at cortical, limbic and brainstem levels, with relevance to mechanisms underlying pain control, hypertension and anxiety.

J Neurosci. 2009 Feb 11;29(6):1817-25.Click here to read

Fear conditioning dependent on autonomic awareness

The degree to which perceptual awareness of threat stimuli and bodily states of arousal modulates neural activity associated with fear conditioning is unknown. We used functional magnetic neuroimaging (fMRI) to study healthy subjects and patients with peripheral autonomic denervation to examine how the expression of conditioning-related activity is modulated by stimulus awareness and autonomic arousal. In controls, enhanced amygdala activity was evident during conditioning to both "seen" (unmasked) and "unseen" (backward masked) stimuli, whereas insula activity was modulated by perceptual awareness of a threat stimulus. Absent peripheral autonomic arousal, in patients with autonomic denervation, was associated with decreased conditioning-related activity in insula and amygdala. The findings indicate that the expression of conditioning-related neural activity is modulated by both awareness and representations of bodily states of autonomic arousal.

Author/s: Critchley, Hugo D (HD); Mathias, Christopher J (CJ); Dolan, Raymond J (RJ);

Affiliation: Department of Imaging Neuroscience, 12 Queen Square, Institute of Neurology and Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL, WC1N 3BG, London, United Kingdom.

Journal: Neuron (Neuron), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Feb; vol 33 (issue 4) : pp 653-63

Changes in cerebral morphology consequent to peripheral autonomic denervation

Our findings suggest that peripheral autonomic denervation (ETS = peripheral autonomic denervation) is associated with grey matter loss in cortical regions encompassing areas that we have previously shown are functionally involved in generation and representation of bodily states of autonomic arousal.
Neuroimage. 2003 Apr;18(4):908-16.Click here to read Links

Critchley HD, Good CD, Ashburner J, Frackowiak RS, Mathias CJ, Dolan RJ.

Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, UCL, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. j.critchley@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk

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