Functional assessment of bidirectional cortical and peripheral neural control on heartbeat dynamics: A brain-heart study on thermal stress

NeuroImage

Vincenzo Catrambone¹  Diego Candia-Rivera²  Riccardo Barbieri²  Gaetano Valenza³ 

[1] Corresponding author.;Bioengineering and Robotics Research Center E. Piaggio and Department of Information Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Pisa, Pisa 56122, Italy;Department of Electronics, Informatics and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milano 20133, Italy;

关键词: Brain-heart interplay;    Physiological modeling;    Synthetic data generation;    Sympathovagal estimation;    Cold-pressor test;    Heart rate variability;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The study of functional Brain-Heart Interplay (BHI) from non-invasive recordings has gained much interest in recent years. Previous endeavors aimed at understanding how the two dynamical systems exchange information, providing novel holistic biomarkers and important insights on essential cognitive aspects and neural system functioning. However, the interplay between cardiac sympathovagal and cortical oscillations still has much room for further investigation. In this study, we introduce a new computational framework for a functional BHI assessment, namely the Sympatho-Vagal Synthetic Data Generation Model, combining cortical (electroencephalography, EEG) and peripheral (cardiac sympathovagal) neural dynamics. The causal, bidirectional neural control on heartbeat dynamics was quantified on data gathered from 26 human volunteers undergoing a cold-pressor test. Results show that thermal stress induces heart-to-brain functional interplay sustained by EEG oscillations in the delta and gamma bands, primarily originating from sympathetic activity, whereas brain-to-heart interplay originates over central brain regions through sympathovagal control. The proposed methodology provides a viable computational tool for the functional assessment of the causal interplay between cortical and cardiac neural control.

【 授权许可】

Unknown