Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia: Methods of Measurement and Interpretations of Tonic and Dynamic Vagal Cardiac Drive Index in Psychophysiology of Emotions

Beat-to-beat changes in heart period (heart period variability, HPV) are mediated by fluctuations in autonomic activity. Spectral analysis is used to quantify such fluctuations in the range of 0.15-0.40 Hz (high frequency, HF), which are influenced primarily by parasympathetic factors. These fluctuations are often referred to as RSA (respiratory sinus arrhythmia), the physiological phenomenon extracted by spectral analysis and other methods including histograms of heart rate ( HR), deviations of HR etc. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia indexing with peak-to-valley method suggested by Grossman et at., (1981) yields a simple range statistic and is quantified on breath-by-breath basis, thus being quite sensitive and less dependent on recording time as compared to spectral analysis. It is strongly recommended to use at least 1 min epoch to asses HF component of HPV and at least 2 min fer low frequency (LF) of HPV and even 5 min far valid clinical assessment. Peak-to-valley statistic is limited to RSA index only, but has its pragmatic advantages. Most important is possibility of its application far relatively small epoch analysis. We used short periods (20,30, 40 sec only) and off-line analysis of RSA using ECG and respiration curve this method of assessment and proved that this method is more practically effective. The RSA index was not so far dependent on respiration pattern differences and reflected actual vagal control of HR and were accompanied by low HR under some high stress conditions and in an aversive affective visual stimulation experiments. Another factor that might modulate cardiac chronotropic response is the interaction of sympathetic and parasympathetic inputs on sino-atrial (SA) node level, because responses to vagal influences are known to be proportional to ongoing sympathetic activity, that is so called accentuated antagonism. Since sympathetic outflow (increment of influences on SA) under negative emotions or stress was high in almost all physiological responses, vagal effects on HR could be therefore potentiated, leading to masking of output cardiac response seen in HPV, In the case of moderate sympathetic activation, on the other hand, autonomic interactions in cardiac control appear to be minimal. Thus RSA index appears to be an effective alternative method to assess and measure spectral HPV.