Cerebral blood flow in essential hypotension during emotional activation

Variations of blood flow velocity in the left and right middle cerebral arteries (MCA) were measured in 20 hypotensive women and 20 normotensive control subjects during emotional stimulation using functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTDS). The emotional stimuli were composed of three series (neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant) of 20 pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Both groups exhibited greater increases in right than left MCA blood flow during emotional stimulation. However hypotensive subjects showed smaller increases in blood flow than did normotensive controls. Furthermore hypotensives exhibited lower MCA blood flow velocity in both hemispheres at rest than did normotensives. Nevertheless the hypotensive group rated the emotional pictures as more arousing than did the control group. Results suggest a decreased blood flow, in addition to peripheral, in the central nervous system (CNS) of hypotensives, which was associated with normal emotional responses for both valence and hemispherical asymmetry, but also with a general increase of arousal levels. This dissociation might be related to an increase in anterior cerebral arteries (ACA) blood flow and/or to hypotension-mediated baroreceptors’ up-regulation to the reticular system.