A comparative evaluation of heart rate reactivity during MATH and a standard mental arithmetic task

1987 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 301-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.Rick Turner ◽  
Jane Sims ◽  
Douglas Carroll ◽  
Richard K. Morgan ◽  
John K. Hewitt
1997 ◽  
Vol 85 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1451-1454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael F. Madigan ◽  
J. Alexander Dale ◽  
Jeffrey D. Cross

9 men scoring as Type A and Angry and 9 men scoring as Type B and Nonangry on the Jenkins Activity Survey and Spielberger's Trait Anger Expression completed a 1-min. mental arithmetic task and slept through 1 period of rapid eye movement. The Angry Type A scorers showed greater heart-rate increases from baseline to that during mental arithmetic and from nonrapid eye movements to periods of REM than the Nonangry Type B scorers. While the former showed equivalent reactivity to stressors while awake and asleep, the latter group showed less heart-rate reactivity during the period of REM than during mental arithmetic. Neither group yielded clear descriptions of their dreams, and no differences between groups were noted for ratings on aggressivity in dreams. It appears that Angry Type A scorers show cardiovascular hyperreactivity even when asleep in the lab.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (118) ◽  
pp. 4-12
Author(s):  
Krisztina Ábel ◽  
Attila Rausz Szabó ◽  
Attila Szabo

Background. Research suggests that exercise training and/or physical fitness may be associated with lower heart rate reactivity and faster recovery from psychosocial stress. This relationship was rarely studied in children despite the potential protective role of physical activity in stress that may start in early life stages. Methods. In this laboratory investigation we examined 18 athlete and non-athlete children before, during and following exposure to mental stress which consisted of the Stroop Color Word Task and a mental arithmetic task, both distracted by classical music, in a counterbalanced research design. Results. The results based on absolute heart rate measures suggested that athletes exhibited lower heart rates in the stress-anticipation period as well as during the stress period than non-athletes. However, based on relative measures these differences vanished. The two groups of children did not differ in perceived arousal, perceived stressfulness of the mental tasks, and the self-reported feeling states before and after stress. Further, they did not differ in their performance on the two stress-eliciting active-coping tasks as indicated by the number of correct answers. Conclusion. These results appear to suggest that athletic status in children is unrelated to heart rate reactivity and other subjective psychological experiences before, during and after acute psychosocial stress.  Keywords: adolescent, exercise, fitness, physical activity, relative measures.


2010 ◽  
Vol 298 (1) ◽  
pp. H202-H209 ◽  
Author(s):  
André E. Aubert ◽  
Bart Verheyden ◽  
Constantin d′Ydewalle ◽  
Frank Beckers ◽  
Omer Van den Bergh

Sustained weightlessness affects all body functions, among these also cardiac autonomic control mechanisms. How this may influence neural response to central stimulation by a mental arithmetic task remains an open question. The hypothesis was tested that microgravity alters cardiovascular neural response to standardized cognitive load stimuli. Beat-to-beat heart rate, brachial blood pressure, and respiratory frequency were collected in five astronauts, taking part in three different short-duration (10 to 11 days) space missions to the International Space Station. Data recording was performed in supine position 1 mo before launch; at days 5 or 8 in space; and on days 1, 4, and 25 after landing. Heart rate variability (HRV) parameters were obtained in the frequency domain. Measurements were performed in the control condition for 10 min and during a 5-min mental arithmetic stress task, consisting of deducting 17 from a four-digit number, read by a colleague, and orally announcing the result. Our results show that over all sessions (pre-, in-, and postflight), mental stress induced an average increase in mean heart rate (Δ7 ± 1 beats/min; P = 0.03) and mean arterial pressure (Δ7 ± 1 mmHg; P = 0.006). A sympathetic excitation during mental stress was shown from HRV parameters: increase of low frequency expressed in normalized units (Δ8.3 ± 1.4; P = 0.004) and low frequency/high frequency (Δ1.6 ± 0.3; P = 0.001) and decrease of high frequency expressed in normalized units (Δ8.9 ± 1.4; P = 0.004). The total power was not influenced by mental stress. No effect of spaceflight was found on baseline heart rate, mean arterial pressure, and HRV parameters. No differences in response to mental stress were found between pre-, in-, and postflight. Our findings confirm that a mental arithmetic task in astronauts elicits sympathovagal shifts toward enhanced sympathetic modulation and reduced vagal modulation. However, these responses are not changed in space during microgravity or after spaceflight.


2007 ◽  
Vol 46 (03) ◽  
pp. 376-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Tachibana ◽  
K. Takamasu ◽  
K. Kotani

Summary Objectives: The objectives of this paper were to present a method to extract the amplitude of RSA in the respiratory-phase domain, to compare that with subjective or objective indices of the MWL (mental workload), and to compare that with a conventional frequencyanalysis in terms of its accuracy during a mental arithmetic task. Methods: HRV (heart rate variability), ILV (instantaneous lung volume), and motion of the throat were measured under a mental arithmetic experiment and subjective and objective indices were also obtained. The amplitude of RSA was extracted in the respiratory-phase domain, and its correlation with the load level was compared with the results of the frequencydomain analysis, which is the standard analysis of the HRV. Results: The subjective and objective indices decreased as the load level increased, showing that the experimental protocol was appropriate. Then, the amplitude of RSA in the respiratory-phase domain also decreased with the increase in the load level. The results of the correlation analysis showed that the respiratory-phase domain analysis has higher negative correlations, −0.84 and −0.82, with the load level as determined bysimplecorrelation and rankcorrelation, respectively, than does frequencyanalysis, for which the correlations were found to be −0.54 and −0.63, respectively. In addition, it was demonstrated thatthe proposed method could be applied to the short-term extraction of RSA amplitude. Conclusions: We proposed a simple and effective method to extract the amplitude of the respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in the respiratory-phase domain and the results show that this method can estimate cardiac vagal activity more accurately than frequency analysis.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vittorio Iacovella ◽  
Luca Faes ◽  
Uri Hasson

AbstractNeuroimaging research has shown that different cognitive tasks induce relatively specific activation patterns, as well as less task-specific deactivation patterns. Here we examined whether individual differences in Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) activity during task performance correlate with the magnitude of task-induced deactivation. In an fMRI study, participants performed a continuous mental arithmetic task in a task/rest block design, while undergoing combined fMRI and heart / respiration rate acquisitions using photoplethysmograph and respiration belt. As expected, task performance increased heart-rate and reduced the RMSSD, a cardiac index related to vagal tone. Across participants, higher heart rate during task was linked to increased activation in fronto-parietal regions, as well as to stronger deactivation in ventromedial prefrontal regions. Respiration frequency during task was associated with similar patterns, but in different regions than those identified for heart-rate. Finally, in a large set of regions, almost exclusively limited to the Default Mode Network, lower RMSSD was associated with greater deactivation, and furthermore, the vast majority of these regions were task-deactivated at the group level. Together, our findings show that inter-individual differences in ANS activity are strongly linked to task-induced deactivation. Importantly, our findings suggest that deactivation is a multifaceted construct potentially linked to ANS control, because distinct ANS measures correlate with deactivation in different regions. We discuss the implications for current theories of cortical control of the ANS and for accounts of deactivation, with particular reference to studies documenting a “failure to deactivate” in multiple clinical states.


2000 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 159-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey L. Goodie ◽  
Kevin T. Larkin ◽  
Scott Schauss

Abstract The Polar Vantage XL heart rate monitor provides an ambulatory, inexpensive method of continuously measuring heart rate. To examine the validity of the Polar monitor for measuring heart rate during resting periods and while engaging in two stressful tasks, 30 students participated in a 1-hour laboratory session. Heart rates were measured simultaneously using the Polar monitor and electrocardiography (ECG) during a hand grip exercise and a mental arithmetic task, each preceded by a 4-min resting period. Within-subject correlations between the two devices were significant (mean r = 0.98, P < .001). All correlations, except for three participants, exceeded r = 0.90. Between-task correlation analyses revealed high correlations (i. e., rs ≥ 0.98) between the Polar monitor and ECG. The Polar monitor obtained readings that were slightly, though significantly higher than readings obtained using ECG. The correspondence between observed mean heart rates from the Polar monitor and ECG suggest that the Polar monitor provides a valid measure of heart rate during stationary laboratory tasks.


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