Intuitive and factual approaches in the comparison of contractility and repolarization measures of sympathetic myocardial activity.
Obrist (Cardiovascular Psychophysiology: A Perspective, Plenum Press, New York, 1981) has recently argued for the superiority of contractility (e.g. pulse transit time) over ventricular repolarization (e.g. T-wave amplitude) measures as indices of sympathetic myocardial influences on the grounds that the T-wave occurs during the diastolic portion of the cardiac cycle (in contrast to the systolic temporal locus of contractile-based measures). This note suggests that this argument is intuitively rather than factually based because it lacks both logical and empirical validity.
D004562:Electrocardiography; D006321:Heart / Q000294:innervation*; D006801:Humans; D009200:Myocardial Contraction; D013564:Sympathetic Nervous System / Q000502:physiology*