Overview

• The peer-reviewed findings, led by the University of Bristol with UCL and Brazilian partners, were published in Autonomic Neuroscience on September 24.
• Trained rats showed about four times more neurons in the right stellate ganglion’s cardiovascular cluster than the left when compared with untrained animals.
• Neurons on the left side nearly doubled in size while those on the right slightly shrank, revealing a pronounced left–right asymmetry after exercise.
• The stellate ganglia modulate heart rate and rhythm and are clinical targets for nerve blocks or denervation, suggesting the asymmetry could eventually inform side-selective procedures.
• The authors stress the results are early-stage in animals and plan studies to link structure to heart function, replicate in larger models, and probe for analogous patterns in humans using non-invasive markers.