Components of heart rate variability have attracted considerable attention in psychology and medicine and have become important dependent measures in psychophysiology and behavioral medicine. Quantification and interpretation of heart rate variability, however, remain complex issues and are fraught with pitfalls. The present report (a) examines the physiological origins and mechanisms of heart rate variability, (b) considers quantitative approaches to measurement, and (c) highlights important caveats in the interpretation of heart rate variability. Summary guidelines for research in this area are outlined, and suggestions and prospects for future developments are considered.

https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1469-8986.1997.tb02140.x

Heart rate variability: Origins, methods, and interpretive caveats

Heart rate variability (HRV), the change in the time intervals between adjacent heartbeats, is an emergent property of interdependent regulatory systems that operate on different time scales to adapt to challenges and achieve optimal performance. This article briefly reviews neural regulation of the heart, and its basic anatomy, the cardiac cycle, and the sinoatrial and atrioventricular pacemakers. The cardiovascular regulation center in the medulla integrates sensory information and input from higher brain centers, and afferent cardiovascular system inputs to adjust heart rate and blood pressure via sympathetic and parasympathetic efferent pathways. This article reviews sympathetic and parasympathetic influences on the heart, and examines the interpretation of HRV and the association between reduced HRV, risk of disease and mortality, and the loss of regulatory capacity. This article also discusses the intrinsic cardiac nervous system and the heart-brain connection, through which afferent information can influence activity in the subcortical and frontocortical areas, and motor cortex. It also considers new perspectives on the putative underlying physiological mechanisms and properties of the ultra-low-frequency (ULF), very-low-frequency (VLF), low-frequency (LF), and high-frequency (HF) bands. Additionally, it reviews the most common time and frequency domain measurements as well as standardized data collection protocols. In its final section, this article integrates Porges’ polyvagal theory, Thayer and colleagues’ neurovisceral integration model, Lehrer et al.’s resonance frequency model, and the Institute of HeartMath’s coherence model. The authors conclude that a coherent heart is not a metronome because its rhythms are characterized by both complexity and stability over longer time scales. Future research should expand understanding of how the heart and its intrinsic nervous system influence the brain.

/pdf/a-healthy-heart-is-not-a-metronome-an-integrative-review-of-49cjuoyp79.pdf

A healthy heart is not a metronome: an integrative review of the heart's anatomy and heart rate variability.

Psychophysiological research integrating heart rate variability (HRV) has increased during the last two decades, particularly given the fact that HRV is able to index cardiac vagal tone. Vagal tone, which represents the activity of the parasympathetic system, is acknowledged to be linked with many phenomena relevant for psychophysiological research, including self-regulation at the cognitive, emotional, social, and health levels. The ease of HRV collection and measurement coupled with the fact it is relatively affordable, non-invasive and pain free makes it widely accessible to many researchers. This ease of access should not obscure the difficulty of interpretation of HRV findings that can be easily misconstrued, however this can be controlled to some extent through correct methodological processes. Standards of measurement were developed two decades ago by a Task Force within HRV research, and recent reviews updated several aspects of the Task Force paper. However, many methodological aspects related to HRV in psychophysiological research have to be considered if one aims to be able to draw sound conclusions, which makes it difficult to interpret findings and to compare results across laboratories. Those methodological issues have mainly been discussed in separate outlets, making difficult to get a grasp on them, and thus this paper aims to address this issue. It will help to provide psychophysiological researchers with recommendations and practical advice concerning experimental designs, data analysis, and data reporting. This will ensure that researchers starting a project with HRV and cardiac vagal tone are well informed regarding methodological considerations in order for their findings to contribute to knowledge advancement in their field.

/pdf/heart-rate-variability-and-cardiac-vagal-tone-in-3ty5nxgoqb.pdf

Heart Rate Variability and Cardiac Vagal Tone in Psychophysiological Research - Recommendations for Experiment Planning, Data Analysis, and Data Reporting.

http://uhbs-international.net/fileadmin/unispitalbaselch/Bereiche/Medizin/Psychosomatik/Publikationen/Grossmann_Paul/grossman_understanding_respiratory_sinus_2007.pdf

Toward understanding respiratory sinus arrhythmia: relations to cardiac vagal tone, evolution and biobehavioral functions.

Risk factors for chronic pain following breast cancer surgery: a prospective study.

Handbook of Psychophysiology: Cardiovascular Psychophysiology

Feeling your body or feeling badly: evidence for the limited validity of the Somatosensory Amplification Scale as an index of somatic sensitivity.

This chapter describes the use of field research for development of psychological theory. Field research helps identify which phenomena are most psychologically and behaviorally consequential. The chapter focuses on the kinds of theoretical insights afforded by research in field settings. It explains what one means by field research as opposed to laboratory research, and discusses advantages that come from finding and testing ideas in the field. Observational methods can be put to many important uses in field settings. The chapter examines the experimental research in the field that is explicitly designed for the purpose of comparison and causal inference. It explores the range of theoretical goals that can be accomplished with field research. The chapter outlines the strengths and weaknesses of various field research techniques and best practices of each one. It concludes with practical suggestions and reasons for researchers at various stages of experience to engage in field research.

Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology: Inducing and Measuring Emotion and Affect

Autonomic control of the heart varies more linearly with heart period than with rate. Relative linearity confers a greater independence of basal autonomic activation and heart period changes. Thus, heart period appears to be more appropriate for characterizing cardiac phenomena such as autonomic interactions that involve significant baseline shifts. Simulated and published empirical data were used to demonstrate the importance of the chronotropic metric for characterizing autonomic interactions. Simulations revealed a significant autonomic interaction when heart rate, but not heart period, was the chronotropic metric. Published heart rate data also show a substantial autonomic interaction, whereas heart period data do not. These findings suggest that the choice of chronotropic metric can overstate the extent of autonomic interactions on cardiac chronotropic function.

Autonomic interactions and chronotropic control of the heart : Heart period versus heart rate

The purposes of the present study were to determine the autonomic origins of a bradycardiac response to a moderate intensity nonsignal auditory stimulus and the changes in autonomic cardiac control of this response as a function of habituation. Pure tone stimuli were repeatedly presented to participants while phasic changes in heart period (HP), preejection period (PEP), and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were observed. Tone stimuli initially elicited an increase in HP, an increase in RSA, and a decrease in PEP, suggesting a coactivation of the parasympathetic and sympathetic inputs mediating changes in the bradycardiac HP response. As expected, HP responses habituated with repeated presentations of the tones. PEP and RSA responses, however, demonstrated different habituation rates than HP. These data demonstrate that cardiodeceleratory responses to nonsignal stimuli can arise from changes in activity of both autonomic divisions and document the importance of considering the autonomic origins of habituating cardiac responses in order to fully understand the process of response habituation.

Karen S. Quigley

Papers

Handbook of Psychophysiology: Cardiovascular Psychophysiology

Feeling your body or feeling badly: evidence for the limited validity of the Somatosensory Amplification Scale as an index of somatic sensitivity.

Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology: Inducing and Measuring Emotion and Affect

Autonomic interactions and chronotropic control of the heart : Heart period versus heart rate

Autonomic origins of a nonsignal stimulus-elicited bradycardia and its habituation in humans.