Since their origin over one half-century ago, microneurographic recordings of sympathetic nerve activity have significantly advanced our understanding of the generation and regulation of central sympathetic outflow in human health and disease. For example, it is now appreciated that a myriad of disease states exhibit chronic sympathetic overactivity, a significant predictor of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. While microneurographic recordings allow for the direct quantification of sympathetic outflow, they alone do not provide information with respect to the ensuing sympathetically-mediated vasoconstriction and blood pressure (BP) response. Therefore, the study of vascular and/or BP responses to sympathetic outflow (i.e., sympathetic transduction) has now emerged as an area of growing interest within the field of neural cardiovascular control in human health and disease. To date, studies have primarily examined sympathetic transduction under two distinct paradigms: when reflexively evoking sympatho-excitation through the induction of a laboratory stressor (i.e., sympathetic transduction during stress) and/or following spontaneous bursts of sympathetic outflow occurring under resting conditions (i.e., sympathetic transduction at rest). The purpose of this brief review is to highlight how our physiological understanding of sympathetic transduction has been advanced by these studies, and to evaluate the primary analytical techniques developed to study sympathetic transduction in humans. We also discuss the framework by which the assessment of sympathetic transduction during stress reflects a fundamentally different process relative to sympathetic transduction at rest, and why findings from investigations using these different techniques should be interpreted as such and not necessarily be considered one and the same.

中文翻译：

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人类的交感神经传导：最新进展和方法论考虑

自半个多世纪前起源以来，交感神经活动的显微神经记录极大地促进了我们对人类健康和疾病中中枢交感神经流出的产生和调节的理解。例如，现在认识到无数疾病状态表现出慢性交感神经过度活跃，这是心血管发病率和死亡率的重要预测因子。虽然显微神经记录可以直接量化交感神经流出，但它们本身并不能提供有关随后交感神经介导的血管收缩和血压 (BP) 反应的信息。因此，研究血管和/或 BP 对交感神经流出的反应（即，交感神经传导）现已成为人类健康和疾病的神经心血管控制领域内越来越受关注的领域。迄今为止，研究主要检查了两种不同范式下的交感神经传导：当通过诱导实验室应激源（即应激期间的交感神经传导）反射性地唤起交感神经兴奋时和/或在静息条件下发生的交感神经流出自发爆发后（即，休息时的交感神经传导）。这篇简短回顾的目的是强调这些研究如何促进了我们对交感神经传导的生理学理解，并评估为研究人类交感神经传导而开发的主要分析技术。