Preliminary study of the significance of measure of autonomic balance

DURING the last three years several reportshave been made of attempts to measure indi-vidual differences in the functioning of the auto-nomic nervous system (11, 12, 13, 14, 16). The purposes underlying this work involve two general hypotheses. One, a modification of the Eppinger and Hess hypothesis, has been stated elsewhere (11), and is now repeated: A. The differential chemical reactivity and the phys-iological antagonism of the adrenergic and cholinergic branches of the autonomic nervous system permit of a situation in which the action of one branch may pre-dominate over that of the other. This predominances, or autonomic imbalance, may be phasic or chronic, and may obtain for either the adrenergic or the cholinergic system. B. Autonomic imbalance, when measured in an un-selected population, will be distributed continuously about a central tendency which shall be defined as autonomic balance. The second hypothesis, one that is fairly common, is that the autonomic nervous system bears a signifi-cant relationship to certain forms of personal and personal-social behavior; more particularly, behavior that is associated with affective experiences. If an.experimenter or clinician conceives of indi-vidual differences in autonomic function, he is apt to follow the work of Cannon (1), and to associate sympathetic hyperactivity with emotional behavior. Kling (8) and others, however, would predict para-sympathetic hyperaetivity as a major component of emotional behavior, and the work of Gellhorn and his associates (5, 6) would indicate that during emotional reactions there is increased activity in both branches of the autonomic system. The prob-lem has enjoyed little investigation because of the lack of technics for adequately measuring, in man, any unitary activity of either branch of the system. It is believed that such a technic is now available. A recent report in this JOURNAL (14) has shown that each of three separate analyses of physiologi