Contrasts between the cardiovascular concomitants of tests of planning and attention

Physiological response stereotypy is a well-established psychophysiological construct. Unfortunately, specifying parameters of tasks that evoke differing physiological responses has proved difficult. We have recorded cardiovascular activity while subjects carried out executive and attentional tasks that differed not only psychologically but also in their sensitivity to brain pathology and to pharmacological manipulations. Finapres recordings were made of 30 healthy, normal subjects (mean age 24 years) performing two tasks involving differing aspects of sustained attention and two tasks involving differing aspects of spatial working memory and planning. Measures of heart rate and blood pressure, heart rate and blood pressure variability, and their spectral derivatives revealed differing patterns of cardiovascular adjustment between the "attentional" and "planning" tasks. Each test raised blood pressure, but changes in blood pressure and heart rate variability were confined to the attentional tasks. These findings suggest distinct brain mechanisms subserving different forms of arousal.