Article

The Traditional Autonomic Narrative Misleads Yet Persists – A Critical Review and Proposed Alternative to Replace It

2026-06-22

Abstract excerpt

The dominant narrative of autonomic nervous function remains essentially that proposed by Walter B. Cannon over a hundred years ago. It emphasizes sympathetic mediation of “fight-or-flight” responses and catabolism and associates the parasympathetic system with “rest-and-digest” functions and anabolism. Dual innervation of tissues and an antagonistic relationship between the divisions is presented as the rule, wit...

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Literature Corpus work: a268e19e-2111-58a1-a0e4-e7d5c020e45f
DOI: 10.20944/preprints202510.1768.v5

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