[Emotional stress and extracardiac regulation].

Chronic experiments in rabbits and rats revealed that, when sympathetic influences on the heart prevail during emotional stress, reduce the heart electric stability, induce disorders in the heart rhythm and lead to arterial hypertension. Prevailing of parasympathetic influences, on the contrary, augments the heart electric stability, interferes with an increase in the catecholamines content and prevents structural lesions in the myocardium. Arterial hypertension is absent, at that. The vagal nerves seem to exert an adaptational-trophic and defensive effects on the heart in emotional stress.