Abstract
It is familiar to us that humans emotional stress affects the cardiovascular system. However, the relationship between emotion and arrhythmias is not clear within the human brain. Choronic experiments were carried out in cats because emotional behavior and arrhythmias were elicited by the electrical stimulation of the hypothalamus. Hypothalamic stimulation produced at least five kinds of emotional behavior in cats. It was found that the simultaneous recordings of the ECC's showed arrhythmias frequently accompanied with unpleasant emotional responses such as restlessness and rage. These sites in the hypothalamus were located in and close to the anteromedial and ventromedial nucleus. The arrhythmias induced by the stimulation of the anteromedial hypothalamus were due to the excitation of both sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves. In addition, the rapid exchange in excitability from sympathetic to parasympathetic nerves was one of the requirements for the occurrence of the arrhythmias. Catecholamines released from the adrenal medulla seemed to be related to the duration of the arrhythmias.
