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1/f scaling in heart rate requires antagonistic autonomic control
Zbigniew R Struzik1, Junichiro Hayano, Seiichiro Sakata
1Educational Physiology Laboratory, Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan. z.r.struzik@p.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Abstract:
We present systematic evidence for the origins of 1/f -type temporal scaling in human heart rate. The heart rate is regulated by the activity of two branches of the autonomic nervous system: the parasympathetic (PNS) and the sympathetic (SNS) nervous systems. We examine alterations in the scaling property when the balance between PNS and SNS activity is modified, and find that the relative PNS suppression by congestive heart failure results in a substantial increase in the Hurst exponent H towards random-walk scaling 1/ f(2) and a similar breakdown is observed with relative SNS suppression by primary autonomic failure. These results suggest that 1/f scaling in heart rate requires the intricate balance between the antagonistic activity of PNS and SNS.
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