AJP-Heart and Circulatory Physiology Podcast
Oct 2, 2026 · 33 min · 11 segments
In our latest episode of The AJP-Heart and Circ Podcast, Associate Editor Dr. Jason Carter (Baylor University) interviews authors Dr. Michael Joyner (Mayo Clinic), Dr. Nathaniel Jenkins (University of…
Michael JoynerGuestManda Keller-RossGuestYou know, so all of us on this, on this, uh, podcast are microneurographers as well.
And I was telling Mike when we were discussing the concept of this paper that I had served on a NIH study section for four years, and I remember being in a review where I was not the primary reviewer, but I'm, I'm sitting there listening to the primary [chuckles] reviewer giving their take, and one of their comments was, "You know, and I don't understand why they're proposing this microneurography technique to measure the sympathetic nervous system.
They have heart rate variability as a primary outcome variable." Blew my mind away.
And so I just, uh, you know, we do have a l- a lot of work ahead of us and, and, and the psychological field's part of that, but our own field is part of that.
And with these, you know, kind of multidisciplinary study sections, we've got to do a better job of telling people what heart rate variability is and is not.
And so Mike, I want to kind of throw it back to you and, and you're going to get us started.
Are there any final things you want to say or things you maybe didn't cover? Final kind of thoughts as we wrap this section up.
Jason, as I think about the world when I started in the 1970s, you know, we were still in an era of mass sympathetic discharge and vagal withdrawal and this sort of Walter B. Cannon fight or flight, uh, paradigm.
And what happened, starting with Gunnar Wallin and, and the group in Scandinavia and other colleagues, they started to see the sympathetic nervous system and, and, and also parasympathetic nervous system as m- much more discretely regulated.
They, they really showed how discrete the sympathetic nervous system could be.
And again, there was tremendous animal studies and some instrumented animals and so forth.
So it really, really brought a whole new level of insights away from fight or flight, mass sympathetic discharge, vagal withdrawal.
Uh, so that was a, a terrific, uh, uh, uh, thing that happened over the last thirty, forty years.
But I think we've almost gone back to the future with heart rate variability in the sense that people are making kind of oversimplified assumptions about this represents that, this represents that.
So it's maybe more nuanced than the old fight or flight thing, but nevertheless, it's really, uh, degrading or, or taking some of the nuance away that has been shown to be so important starting again in, in the late '60s, but certainly accelerating through the '70s, '80s, '90s, and onward.
And so I think that's what, what we-- the comment you made or what you heard at the study section, I think that's the real risk here.
It's a risk to doing the sorts of understanding that Manda talked about, why these things are associated, what Austin talked about, the normative data, what Nate talked about, about how do you, how do you measure things and actually do it well, and then what Nisha talked about when she, you know, said there's too many people looking for some sort of transformation of everything metric.
So I, I think that it, it's a backward step in terms of, of what we learned the last fifty years to just start putting all of your eggs into this heart rate variability basket and not go and do the sorts of hypothesis-driven groundwork with whatever techniques are out there.
You know, so all of us on this, on this, uh, podcast are microneurographers as well.
And I was telling Mike when we were discussing the concept of this paper that I had served on a NIH study section for four years, and I remember being in a review where I was not the primary reviewer, but I'm, I'm sitting there listening to the primary [chuckles] reviewer giving their take, and one of their comments was, "You know, and I don't understand why they're proposing this microneurography technique to measure the sympathetic nervous system.
They have heart rate variability as a primary outcome variable." Blew my mind away.
And so I just, uh, you know, we do have a l- a lot of work ahead of us and, and, and the psychological field's part of that, but our own field is part of that.
And with these, you know, kind of multidisciplinary study sections, we've got to do a better job of telling people what heart rate variability is and is not.
And so Mike, I want to kind of throw it back to you and, and you're going to get us started.
Are there any final things you want to say or things you maybe didn't cover? Final kind of thoughts as we wrap this section up.
Jason, as I think about the world when I started in the 1970s, you know, we were still in an era of mass sympathetic discharge and vagal withdrawal and this sort of Walter B. Cannon fight or flight, uh, paradigm.
And what happened, starting with Gunnar Wallin and, and the group in Scandinavia and other colleagues, they started to see the sympathetic nervous system and, and, and also parasympathetic nervous system as m- much more discretely regulated.
They, they really showed how discrete the sympathetic nervous system could be.
And again, there was tremendous animal studies and some instrumented animals and so forth.
So it really, really brought a whole new level of insights away from fight or flight, mass sympathetic discharge, vagal withdrawal.
Uh, so that was a, a terrific, uh, uh, uh, thing that happened over the last thirty, forty years.
But I think we've almost gone back to the future with heart rate variability in the sense that people are making kind of oversimplified assumptions about this represents that, this represents that.
So it's maybe more nuanced than the old fight or flight thing, but nevertheless, it's really, uh, degrading or, or taking some of the nuance away that has been shown to be so important starting again in, in the late '60s, but certainly accelerating through the '70s, '80s, '90s, and onward.
And so I think that's what, what we-- the comment you made or what you heard at the study section, I think that's the real risk here.
It's a risk to doing the sorts of understanding that Manda talked about, why these things are associated, what Austin talked about, the normative data, what Nate talked about, about how do you, how do you measure things and actually do it well, and then what Nisha talked about when she, you know, said there's too many people looking for some sort of transformation of everything metric.
So I, I think that it, it's a backward step in terms of, of what we learned the last fifty years to just start putting all of your eggs into this heart rate variability basket and not go and do the sorts of hypothesis-driven groundwork with whatever techniques are out there.
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