Abstract
For the purpose of study the central regulatory mechanism of blood pressure, simultaneous recordig of EEG, blood pressure, ocular movement, respiration, pulse, galvanic skin reflex and body temperature was carried out continuously during natural sleep. This method was selected because natural sleep is the condition in which external stimuli are blocked; and such a study appears to be necessary to study the endogenous factors in patients with essential hypertension and those with essential hypotension. In patients with hypertension, a fall of blood pressure occure parallelling the depth of sleep; while a rise of blood pressure is noted in patients with hypotension, also parallel with the depth of sleep. In normotensive subjects, along with the depth of the sleep, a mild fall of blood pressure or no change is noted. Ocular movement, galvanic skin reflex, body temperature, respiratory rate, and pulse rate fell, paralling the depth of sleep. In all three groups, the ECG showed no change except for the RR interval. The pulse wave changed to lower amplitude waves in both hypertensives and normotenives parallelling the depth of sleep, but the tendency was more pronounced in the former. Some of the hypotensives on the contrary revealed changes to a higher amplitude. The relationship with blood pressure thus appears to be more in-timate than that with the depth of sleep.
