THE MECHANISM OF PRESSOR AND DEPRESSOR RESPONSES TO ELECTRICALLY INDUCED CONVULSION

Though no objection has been offered to the reports of various authors (1, 2, 3, 4), stating that the blood pressure changes distinctly during and after the electrically induced convulsion, the detailed mechanism of the change remains to be elucidate. Recently Schoetensack and Hann (5) have given a new interpretation of the mechanism based on their experiment in cats. They found that the blood pressure simply rose and never fell below the normal level after electroshock in unanesthetized and curarized cats, while it was merely depressed in animals anesthetized with barbiturate. According to them, the pressor response was abolished by yohimbin and therefore it was attributed to the secretion. of epinephrine, and the depressor response was potentiated by eserine and prevented by atropine, indicating that acetylcholine was liberated. For the last several years we have been engaged in a research on the physiological changes induced by electroshock in experimental animals and have ascertained that the responses of blood pressure were not attributable solely to the liberation of chemical transmitters such as epinephrine or acetylcholine (6). The present report presents the results of our experiments and our view on the nature of the pressor and depressor responses to electroshock.