Baroreceptor response to modeled aortic pressure

The authors have developed, using pressure data from rat, a hemodynamic model of the left ventricle and systemic arteries, which produces realistic representations of aortic pressure. These model-generated pressures are applied to a previously-developed model of a rat aortic baroreceptor (BR) (K.D. Alfrey, Master´s thesis, Rice Univ., 1997) in order to predict the response of individual BR fibers with varying threshold characteristics. The authors find that the majority of fibers respond to normal physiological pressure inputs by producing a bursting pattern of firing. It has been demonstrated previously that such patterns are preferentially propagated by the mNTS, the brain center most involved with processing afferent BR information (J.H. Schild et al., 1995).