Heart rate variability (HRV) refers to various methods of assessing the beat-to-beat variation in the heart over time, in order to draw inference on the outflow of the autonomic nervous system. Easy ...access to measuring HRV has led to a plethora of studies within emotion science and psychology assessing autonomic regulation, but significant caveats exist due to the complicated nature of HRV. Firstly, both breathing and blood pressure regulation have their own relationship to social, emotional, and cognitive experiments - if this is the case are we observing heart rate (HR) changes as a consequence of breathing changes? Secondly, experiments often have poor internal and external controls. In this review we highlight the interrelationships between HR and respiration, as well as presenting recommendations for researchers to use when collecting data for HRV assessment. Namely, we highlight the superior utility of within-subjects designs along with the importance of establishing an appropriate baseline and monitoring respiration.
Frequency analysis of the electrocardiographic RR interval is a common method of quantifying autonomic outflow by measuring the beat-to-beat modulation of the heart (heart rate variability; HRV). ...This review identifies a series of problems with the methods of doing so-the interpretation of low-frequency spectral power, the multiple use of equivalent normalized low frequency (LFnu), high frequency (HFnu) and ratio (LF/HF) terms, and the lack of control over extraneous variables, and reviews research in the calendar year 2012 to determine their prevalence and severity. Results support the mathematical equivalency of ratio units across studies, a reliance on those variables to explain autonomic outflow, and insufficient control of critical experimental variables. Research measurement of HRV has a substantial need for general methodological improvement.
Mindfulness meditation has beneficial effects on brain and body, yet the impact of Vipassana, a type of mindfulness meditation, on heart rate variability (HRV) – a psychophysiological marker of ...mental and physical health – is unknown. We hypothesised increases in measures of well-being and HRV, and decreases in ill-being after training in Vipassana compared to before (time effects), during the meditation task compared to resting baseline (task effects), and a time by task interaction with more pronounced differences between tasks after Vipassana training. HRV (5-minute resting baseline vs. 5-minute meditation) was collected from 36 participants before and after they completed a 10-day intensive Vipassana retreat. Changes in three frequency-domain measures of HRV were analysed using 2 (Time; pre- vs. post-Vipassana)×2 (Task; resting baseline vs. meditation) within subjects ANOVA. These measures were: normalised high-frequency power (HF n.u.), a widely used biomarker of parasympathetic activity; log-transformed high frequency power (ln HF), a measure of RSA and required to interpret normalised HF; and Traube–Hering–Mayer waves (THM), a component of the low frequency spectrum linked to baroreflex outflow. As expected, participants showed significantly increased well-being, and decreased ill-being. ln HF increased overall during meditation compared to resting baseline, while there was a time∗task interaction for THM. Further testing revealed that pre-Vipassana only ln HF increased during meditation (vs. resting baseline), consistent with a change in respiration. Post-Vipassana, the meditation task increased HF n.u. and decreased THM compared to resting baseline, suggesting post-Vipassana task-related changes are characterised by a decrease in absolute LF power, not parasympathetic-mediated increases in HF power. Such baroreflex changes are classically associated with attentional load, and our results are interpreted in light of the concept of ‘flow’ — a state of positive and full immersion in an activity. These results are also consistent with changes in normalised HRV reported in other meditation studies.
•Examines change in well-being after 10 days of mindfulness meditation (Vipassana).•HRV compared pre- and post-Vipassana training at baseline and in meditation task.•Most measures of well-being (positive and negative) improved after post-Vipassana.•Ln HF increased pre-, normalised HF increased, LF (THM) decreased post-Vipassana.•HRV results interpreted in terms of flow, a state of positive immersion in a task.
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Musical performance is a skilled activity performed under intense pressure, thus is often a profound source of anxiety. In other contexts, anxiety and its concomitant symptoms of sympathetic nervous ...system arousal have been successfully ameliorated with HRV biofeedback (HRV BF), a technique involving slow breathing which augments autonomic and emotional regulatory capacity.
This randomised-controlled study explored the impact of a single 30-minute session of HRV BF on anxiety in response to a highly stressful music performance.
A total of 46 trained musicians participated in this study and were randomly allocated to a slow breathing with or without biofeedback or no-treatment control group. A 3 Group×2 Time mixed experimental design was employed to compare the effect of group before and after intervention on performance anxiety (STAI-S) and frequency domain measures of HRV.
Slow breathing groups (n=30) showed significantly greater improvements in high frequency (HF) and LF/HF ratio measures of HRV relative to control (n=15) during 5 minute recordings of performance anticipation following the intervention (effect size: η(2) =0.122 and η(2) =0.116, respectively). The addition of biofeedback to a slow breathing protocol did not produce differential results. While intervention groups did not exhibit an overall reduction in self-reported anxiety, participants with high baseline anxiety who received the intervention (n=15) displayed greater reductions in self-reported state anxiety relative to those in the control condition (n=7) (r=0.379).
These findings indicate that a single session of slow breathing, regardless of biofeedback, is sufficient for controlling physiological arousal in anticipation of psychosocial stress associated with music performance and that slow breathing is particularly helpful for musicians with high levels of anxiety. Future research is needed to further examine the effects of HRV BF as a low-cost, non-pharmacological treatment for music performance anxiety.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Heart rate variability (HRV) is widely used to assess autonomic nervous system (ANS) function. It is traditionally collected from a dedicated laboratory electrocardiograph (ECG). This presents a ...barrier to collecting the large samples necessary to maintain the statistical power of between-subject psychophysiological comparisons. An alternative to ECG involves an optical pulse sensor or photoplethysmograph run from a smartphone or similar portable device: smartphone pulse rate variability (SPRV). Experiment 1 determined the simultaneous accuracy between ECG and SPRV systems in n=10 participants at rest. Raw SPRV values showed a consistent positive bias, which was successfully attenuated with correction. Experiment 2 tested an additional n=10 participants at rest, during attentional load, and during mild stress (exercise). Accuracy was maintained, but slightly attenuated during exercise. The best correction method maintained an accuracy of +/−2% for low-frequency spectral power, and +/−5% for high-frequency spectral power over all points. Thus, the SPRV system records a pulse-to-pulse approximation of an ECG-derived heart rate series that is sufficiently accurate to perform time- and frequency-domain analysis of its variability, as well as accurately reflecting change in autonomic output provided by typical psychophysiological stimuli. This represents a novel method by which an accurate approximation of HRV may be collected for large-sample or naturalistic cardiac psychophysiological research.
•This work develops an accurate platform for the mass collection of heart rate.•The accuracy of this monitor was tested at rest and during experimental stress.•The monitor returns acceptable raw values which are improved by correction.•Margin of error is smaller than ≈5% for all heart rate variability measures.•This has the potential to greatly increase HRV data collection capacity.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
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How Podcasts Can Benefit Scientific Communities Quintana, Daniel S.; Heathers, James A.J.
Trends in cognitive sciences,
January 2021, 2021-01-00, 20210101, Volume:
25, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Podcasts are emerging as popular fora for discussing science. Here, we describe how podcasts can benefit scientific communities by disseminating career-specific information that is often unwritten ...and hidden to those outside academic social knowledge networks. We also provide practical advice on how scientists can launch their own podcasts.
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The number of publications investigating heart rate variability (HRV) in psychiatry and the behavioral sciences has increased markedly in the last decade. In addition to the significant debates ...surrounding ideal methods to collect and interpret measures of HRV, standardized reporting of methodology in this field is lacking. Commonly cited recommendations were designed well before recent calls to improve research communication and reproducibility across disciplines. In an effort to standardize reporting, we propose the Guidelines for Reporting Articles on Psychiatry and Heart rate variability (GRAPH), a checklist with four domains: participant selection, interbeat interval collection, data preparation and HRV calculation. This paper provides an overview of these four domains and why their standardized reporting is necessary to suitably evaluate HRV research in psychiatry and related disciplines. Adherence to these communication guidelines will help expedite the translation of HRV research into a potential psychiatric biomarker by improving interpretation, reproducibility and future meta-analyses.
The GRIM Test Brown, Nicholas J. L.; Heathers, James A. J.
Social psychological & personality science,
05/2017, Volume:
8, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We present a simple mathematical technique that we call granularity-related inconsistency of means (GRIM) for verifying the summary statistics of research reports in psychology. This technique ...evaluates whether the reported means of integer data such as Likert-type scales are consistent with the given sample size and number of items. We tested this technique with a sample of 260 recent empirical articles in leading journals. Of the articles that we could test with the GRIM technique (N = 71), around half (N = 36) appeared to contain at least one inconsistent mean, and more than 20% (N = 16) contained multiple such inconsistencies. We requested the data sets corresponding to 21 of these articles, receiving positive responses in 9 cases. We confirmed the presence of at least one reporting error in all cases, with three articles requiring extensive corrections. The implications for the reliability and replicability of empirical psychology are discussed.
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