Browsing by keyword "Nervous system"
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Interaction between Heart Rate Variability and Respiration in Preterm InfantsSeveral studies have focused attention on cardio-respiratory function as an important indicator of development in infants. In the preterm infant, however, it remains unclear whether respiratory activity already affects heart beat variations at such an early development stage. In this work we investigate the presence of cardio-respiratory coupling in preterm infants by quantifying the interaction between heart rate variability and respiration using multivariate autoregressive analysis. We evaluated the frequency domain indices using standard methods. Results show a significantly higher coupling, as confirmed by surrogate data analysis, in the frequency range associated with regular breathing compared to other ranges. These observations indicate a mild, but present, respiratory sinus arrhythmia in preterm infants.
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Molecular pathways linking adipose innervation to insulin action in obesity and diabetes mellitusAdipose tissue comprises adipocytes and many other cell types that engage in dynamic crosstalk in a highly innervated and vascularized tissue matrix. Although adipose tissue has been studied for decades, it has been appreciated only in the past 5 years that extensive arborization of nerve fibres has a dominant role in regulating the function of adipose tissue. This Review summarizes the latest literature, which suggests that adipocytes signal to local sensory nerve fibres in response to perturbations in lipolysis and lipogenesis. Such adipocyte signalling to the central nervous system causes sympathetic output to distant adipose depots and potentially other metabolic tissues to regulate systemic glucose homeostasis. Paracrine factors identified in the past few years that mediate such adipocyte-neuron crosstalk are also reviewed. Similarly, immune cells and endothelial cells within adipose tissue communicate with local nerve fibres to modulate neurotransmitter tone, blood flow, adipocyte differentiation and energy expenditure, including adipose browning to produce heat. This understudied field of neurometabolism related to adipose tissue biology has great potential to reveal new mechanistic insights and potential therapeutic strategies for obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus.