Central Nervous System Circuitries Underlying Two Types of Peripheral Autonomic Nervous System Disorders

ABSTRACT

The assessment of circulating neurotransmitters: noradrenaline, adrenaline, dopamine, platelet serotonin, plasma serotonin and plasma tryptophan before and after many types of stressor agents and neuropharmacological drugs carried out over the last thirty years allowed us to accumulate information dealing with the central nervous system (CNS) versus the peripheral autonomic nervous system (ANS) interactions in healthy as well as diseased mammals. Furthermore, the accurate knowledge about the CNS circuitry disorders which underlie both the CNS and peripheral clinical syndromes, has allowed us to prescribe successful neuropharmacological therapeutical strategies for many types of illnesses. In addition, the demonstration that the clinical improvement was always paralleled by the normalization of the neurochemical, hormonal, immunological and clinical profiles affords strong support to our point of view. According to all the above, the authors postulate the existence of two types of diseases: type A and Type N, which are underlain by two opposite CNS + ANS disorders. Type A diseases should be associated with the "uncoping stress" syndrome and are underlain by hyperactivity of the adrenocortical glands plus the CNS disorder characterized by the predominance of the C1(adrenergic) + DR(serotonergic) axis over the A5(noradrenergic) + MR(serotonergic) binomial, whereas the type N diseases depends on the opposite profile: "endogenous depression" syndrome. Finally, we quoted exhaustive evidence showing that the well known fading of both the A6(noradrenergic) + C1(adrenergic) CNS nuclei activity occurring during aging is responsible for the ANS + CNS disorder which is similar to that underlying psychosis, Alzheimer, post-traumatic stress disorder and deficit-attention hyperactive disorder.