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 26, 2008

Influence of sympathetic autonomic arousal on cortical arousal

Influence of sympathetic autonomic arousal on cortical arousal: implications for a therapeutic behavioural intervention in epilepsy.

Negative amplitude shifts of cortical potential are related to seizure activity in epilepsy. Regulation of the cortical potential with biofeedback has been successfully used to reduce the frequency of some patients' seizures. Although such behavioural treatments are increasingly popular as an alternative to pharmacotherapy, there has been no investigation of the mechanisms that might bridge the behavioural index of peripheral autonomic activity and the central regulation of arousal. Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) is a sensitive measurement of autonomic arousal and physiological state which reflects one's behaviour. Thus we investigated the effect of peripheral autonomic modulation on cortical arousal with the future intention of using GSR biofeedback as a therapeutic treatment for epilepsy. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15120749?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=1&log$=relatedarticles&logdbfrom=pubmed

Fear conditioning - the influence of awareness and autonomic arousal on functional neuroanatomy

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.
Critchley HD, Mathias CJ, Dolan RJ.

Neuron. 2002 Feb 14;33(4):653-63.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11856537