Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 1991 Oct;98(4):459-87.
doi: 10.1037/0033-295x.98.4.459.

Autonomic determinism: the modes of autonomic control, the doctrine of autonomic space, and the laws of autonomic constraint

G G Berntson  1 , J T Cacioppo, K S Quigley
Affiliations
Review

Autonomic determinism: the modes of autonomic control, the doctrine of autonomic space, and the laws of autonomic constraint

G G Berntson et al. Psychol Rev. 1991 Oct.

Abstract

Contemporary findings reveal that the multiple modes of autonomic control do not lie along a single continuum extending from parasympathetic to sympathetic dominance but rather distribute within a 2-dimensional space. The physiological origins and empirical documentation for the multiple modes of autonomic control are considered. Then a formal 2-dimensional conception of autonomic space is proposed, and a quantitative model for its translation into a functional output surface is derived. It is shown that this model (a) accounts for much of the error variance that has traditionally plagued psychophysiological studies, (b) subsumes psychophysiological principles such as the law of initial values, (c) gives rise to formal laws of autonomic constraint, and (d) has fundamental implications for the direction and interpretation of a wide array of psychophysiological studies.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources