Brain and heart dynamics

Back Cover Text This ambitious and comprehensive manual represents an essential contribution to our current understanding of interactions between heart and brain, a research topic generating growing interest. Despite the increasing awareness that neural mechanisms are the primary cause of cardiac disease and its progression, therapy continues to focus on end-organ protection and does not approach the neural core of the problem. Growing public health problems such as heart failure are still treated with autonomic drugs that are 30-40 years old and simply act on cardiac receptors. However, it has now been shown that the progression of ischemic heart disease to heart failure is mainly due to abnormal central responses to incipient cardiac disease, with neural activation the primary cause rather than the consequence of cardiac remodeling. Written by leading international experts in their respective research areas, it presents a variety of perspectives on the core topic: from social and philosophical to gender-related aspects. Designed for a broad readership, it includes dedicated sections for cardiologists, psychiatrists, neurologists and psychotherapists looking for a more insightful and targeted approach to neuro-cardiovascular disease.

Intro -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- About the Editors -- About the Section Ediotrs -- Contributors -- Part I: Functional Anatomy and Molecular Basis of the Cardiac-Brain Axis -- 1 Brain-Heart Afferent-Efferent Traffic -- Introduction: Overview of Cardiac Neuronal Control -- Structural and Functional Organization of the Cardiac Nervous System: Peripheral Signaling -- Cardiac Afferent Neurons -- Nodose Ganglion Cardiac Afferent Neurons -- Dorsal Root Ganglion Cardiac Afferent Neurons

Cardiovascular Afferent Neurons in Intrathoracic Extracardiac Ganglia and in Ganglionated Plexi -- Cardiac Motor Neurons -- Cardiac Sympathetic Efferent Neurons -- Cardiac Parasympathetic Efferent Neurons -- Local Circuit Neurons -- Structural and Functional Organization of the Cardiac Nervous System: Central Signaling -- Neuraxial Transduction of Cardiac Pathology -- Neuraxial Transduction of Myocardial Ischemia and Infarction -- Neuraxial Transduction in Heart Failure -- Concluding Summary -- Cross-References -- References -- 2 Brain-Heart Communication -- Introduction

Evidence of Heart-Brain Interactions: The Hardware -- The Signaling Pathways: The Software -- Reflexes and Modulators…