Blood Pressure Control

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31923, 26 February 1969, Page 11

Blood Pressure Control

(By JANE E. BRODY) . A research team at Harvard Medical School has demonstrated that young men, reinforced by views of nudes appearing in “Playboy” magazine, can be trained to raise or lower their own blood pressure. Surprisingly, the researchers say, despite the reward chosen for the experiment, they had more luck training the men to lower than to raise their blood pressure. The experiment, described in the journal “Science,” supports extensive findings in animals reported in the same journal by Dr Neal E. Miller, a Rockefeller university psychologist. Dr Miller found that animals can learn to control such automatic responses as heart rate, blood pressure, glandular secretions and brain waves in response to rewards and punishments. Normal Subjects In the Harvard study, normal subjects rather than patients were used. Dr David Shapiro, Harvard psychologist who designed the experiment, said it was done mainly to test the effectiveness of the approach. Dr Shapiro worked ! with Bernard Tursky, an

engineer-psychologist, and Pr Elliot Gershon and Dr Melvin Stern, both residents in psychiatry. Twenty male college students who had normal blood pressure participated in the experiment, which involved about 45 minutes of training. Half the students were trained to raise their blood pressure, and the other half to lower it. Rewards Blood pressure was measured by a regular blood pressure cuff, the readings from which were recorded at each heart beat. The recording device was connected to the reward mechanism, which was triggered whenever a change in pressure occurred in the desired direction. A student who was being trained to lower his blood pressure, for example, received a flash of light and a blip whenever his pressure went below its pre-test level. After he received 20 flashes of light, he was shown a projected slide of a nude from “Playboy” magazine for five seconds. Copyright, “New York Times” News Service.

■ack to Auckland.—The Northern Districts batsman, J. Carson, is returning to Auckland, where he will play tor the Grafton Club. Carson, aged 23. represented Auckland in Plunket Shield matches in 1963-64 and later lived in Brisbane and Hamilton.