Human Psychophysiology and PTSD

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Jovanovic ◽  
Seth Davin Norrholm
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Heart Rate Variability ◽  
Clinical Research ◽  
Fear Conditioning ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Symptom Severity ◽  
Muscle Contractions ◽  
Pavlovian Fear Conditioning ◽  
Psychophysiological Measures ◽  
Biological Assessments

Psychophysiological measures provide useful tools for investigating neurobiological mechanisms of trauma-related sequalae. In addition, they can serve as objective biological assessments of symptom severity in clinical research. This chapter describes the methods for collection of psychophysiological measures. These include muscle contractions (startle), electrodermal skin conductance, heart rate, and heart rate variability (HRV) at baseline, under stress, and following Pavlovian fear conditioning. These approaches are important both for understanding biology as well as for providing objective biomarkers that can be compared translationally from animals to humans. It also reviews the literature that has used these measures in PTSD. The evidence to date strongly suggests that these data provide robust correlates of PTSD severity.

scholarly journals Stress Markers for Mental States and Biotypes of Depression and Anxiety: A Scoping Review and Preliminary Illustrative Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 247054702110003
Author(s):  
Megan Chesnut ◽  
Sahar Harati ◽  
Pablo Paredes ◽  
Yasser Khan ◽  
Amir Foudeh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Heart Rate Variability ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Neural Circuit ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Classification Model ◽  
Depression And Anxiety ◽  
Stress Markers ◽  
Physiological Markers

Depression and anxiety disrupt daily function and their effects can be long-lasting and devastating, yet there are no established physiological indicators that can be used to predict onset, diagnose, or target treatments. In this review, we conceptualize depression and anxiety as maladaptive responses to repetitive stress. We provide an overview of the role of chronic stress in depression and anxiety and a review of current knowledge on objective stress indicators of depression and anxiety. We focused on cortisol, heart rate variability and skin conductance that have been well studied in depression and anxiety and implicated in clinical emotional states. A targeted PubMed search was undertaken prioritizing meta-analyses that have linked depression and anxiety to cortisol, heart rate variability and skin conductance. Consistent findings include reduced heart rate variability across depression and anxiety, reduced tonic and phasic skin conductance in depression, and elevated cortisol at different times of day and across the day in depression. We then provide a brief overview of neural circuit disruptions that characterize particular types of depression and anxiety. We also include an illustrative analysis using predictive models to determine how stress markers contribute to specific subgroups of symptoms and how neural circuits add meaningfully to this prediction. For this, we implemented a tree-based multi-class classification model with physiological markers of heart rate variability as predictors and four symptom subtypes, including normative mood, as target variables. We achieved 40% accuracy on the validation set. We then added the neural circuit measures into our predictor set to identify the combination of neural circuit dysfunctions and physiological markers that accurately predict each symptom subtype. Achieving 54% accuracy suggested a strong relationship between those neural-physiological predictors and the mental states that characterize each subtype. Further work to elucidate the complex relationships between physiological markers, neural circuit dysfunction and resulting symptoms would advance our understanding of the pathophysiological pathways underlying depression and anxiety.

scholarly journals The relationship between Gulf War Illness symptom severity and heart rate variability: A pilot study

Life Sciences ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 119663
Author(s):  
Kyle J. Jaquess ◽  
Nathaniel Allen ◽  
Timothy J. Chun ◽  
Lucas Crock ◽  
Alexander A. Zajdel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Heart Rate Variability ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
Symptom Severity ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Gulf War Illness ◽  
The Relationship

scholarly journals Effects of intolerance of uncertainty on subjective and psychophysiological measures during fear acquisition and delayed extinction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maren Klingelhöfer-Jens ◽  
Jayne Morriss ◽  
Tina B Lonsdorf
Keyword(s):  
Fear Conditioning ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Intolerance Of Uncertainty ◽  
Acquisition Training ◽  
Extinction Training ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Psychophysiological Measures ◽  
Learned Fear ◽  
Startle Blink

Individuals who score high in self-reported Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) tend to find uncertainty unacceptable and aversive. In recent years, research has shed light on the role of IU in modulating subjective (i.e. expectancy ratings) and psychophysiological responses (i.e. skin conductance) across different classical fear conditioning procedures, particularly that of immediate extinction. However, there remain gaps in understanding how IU, in comparison to other negative emotionality traits (STAI-T), impact different types of subjective and psychophysiological measures during different classical fear conditioning procedures. Here, we analyzed IU, STAI-T, subjective (i.e. fear ratings) and psychophysiological (i.e. skin conductance, auditory startle blink) data recorded during fear acquisition training and 24h-delayed extinction training (n = 66). Higher IU, over STAI-T, was: (1) significantly associated with greater fear ratings to the learned fear cue during fear acquisition training, and (2) at trend associated with greater fear ratings to the learned fear versus safe cue during delayed extinction training. Both IU and STAI-T were not related to skin conductance or auditory startle blink during fear acquisition training and delayed extinction training. These results add to and extend our current understanding of the role of IU on subjective and physiological measures during different fear conditioning procedures, particularly that of delayed extinction training. Implications of these findings and future directions are discussed.

Effects of Electrical Acupuncture on Acupoint BL15 Evaluated in Terms of Heart Rate Variability, Pulse Rate Variability and Skin Conductance Response

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (01) ◽  
pp. 23-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chih-Chieh Hsu ◽  
Ching-Sung Weng ◽  
Te-Sheng Liu ◽  
Yuh-Show Tsai ◽  
Yung-Hsien Chang
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Heart Rate Variability ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Pulse Rate ◽  
Skin Conductance Response ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Pulse Rate Variability ◽  
Electrical Acupuncture ◽  
Experimental Group ◽  
Frequency Power

In this research, heart rate variability (HRV), pulse rate variability (PRV) and human skin conductance (SC) of all acupoints on Heart Meridian were used to evaluate the effects of electrical acupuncture (EA) on acupoint BL15 (Bladder Meridian). Ten healthy volunteers (aged 23 ± 6) were selected as the control group on the first day, and then used again as the experimental group on the second day. The control group received sham EA during the study, while subjects of the experimental group were stimulated by 2 Hz EA on acupoint BL15 for 10 minutes. Electrocardiogram (ECG), wrist blood pressure pulse meter and skin conductance response (SCR) device were used to measure and analyze HRV, PRV and SCR for the two groups before and after stimulation. From the spectrum analysis of ECG and pulse pressure graph, we found that the EA applied on BL15 could induce a significant increase in the normalized high frequency power (nHFP) component of HRV and PRV, as well as a significant decrease in the normalized low frequency power (nLFP) part ( p < 0.05). Moreover, both the heart rate and pulse rate were reduced in the analysis of the time domain of ECG and PRV. Furthermore, most of the SCR values at acupoints were decreased after stimulation. These results also indicate that the stimulation of BL15 by EA could cause relaxation, calmness and reduce feeling of tension or distress.

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