◾️ Aging and atherosclerosis can blunt carotid baroreceptor responses due to stiffening of the vascular wall not allowing as much transduction of wall distention.

◾️ If a vessel wall is stiffer, it doesn't distend as much or become bigger in responses to changes in blood pressure. So if blood pressure goes up, it should stretch the blood vessel.

◾️ If it stretches the blood vessel, it impacts or enacts changes in the nerve that's right around that blood vessel and as it distends it pushes on that nerve and will transduce the signal back to the brain. 

◾️ In this case if you have a stiffer vessel, less information travels through a stiff vessel and therefore you don't respond to the same extent.