Can We Die from Fear?

The relationship between stressful emotions and sudden cardiac death is sup­ported not only by anecdotal reports, but also by experimental, epidemiologic and clinical data. Links between emotional stress, neural control and cardiac function are investigated by neurocardiology, a new interdisciplinary area in medicine. The three main issues of neurocar­diology: anatomic connections between the brain and the heart, experimental studies on ani­mals and clinical studies of the role of stress in production of the ventricular arrhythmias – are briefly rewieved.