Editorial: Neurocardiovascular Diseases: New Aspects of the Old Issues

[...]dlPAG is presented as integrator of the reactions of both the conscious and the unconscious to threatening stimuli with dependent autonomic networks (i.e., cardiorespiratory network) which support the behavioral response to stress and threatening stimuli. Future studies need to address the questions of chemical phenotyping of the dlPAG and other extensive stress mediating brain networks; the question of morpho-functional plasticity with respect to timing and duration of stress exposure; association of stress-induced morpho-functional changes of critical brain networks associated with different cardiovascular pathologies, as well as the question of genetic predisposition to developing of specific pathological entities like NCVD on the order of short or long time scales. In this line, the study that investigated the effect of peripheral neural input to the heart rate regulating network by Watanabe and Hotta for the first time examined the specific cardiac autonomic changes induced by the bio-mechanical pressure stimulation of skeletal muscle. Future studies are necessary for revealing the site of the interaction of peripheral muscle pressure, stretching and contraction stimulus of the CVS neural networks (spinal or brainstem), and chemical phenotyping for the purpose of pharmacological intervention, and the role of tonic pre-stimulus sympathetic neural activity, for the development of the hemodynamic profiles that are susceptible to progression of the compartment syndrome.