Heartbeat-evoked potentials following voluntary hyperventilation in epilepsy patients: respiratory influences on...

Current evidence indicates a modulating role of respiratory processes in cardiac interoception, yet whether altered breathing patterns influence heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEP) remains inconclusive.

Here, we examined the effects of voluntary hyperventilation (VH) as part of a clinical routine examination on scalp-recorded HEPs in epilepsy patients (N = 80).

Using cluster-based permutation analyses, HEP amplitudes were compared across pre-VH and post-VH conditions within young and elderly subgroups, as well as for the total sample. No differences in the HEP were detected for younger participants or across the full sample, while an increased late HEP during pre-VH compared to post-VH was fond in the senior group, denoting decreased cardiac interoceptive processing after hyperventilation.

The present study, thus, provides initial evidence of breathing-related HEP modulations in elderly epilepsy patients, emphasizing the potential of HEP as an interoceptive neural marker that could partially extend to the representation of pulmonary signaling. We speculate that aberrant CO₂-chemosensing, coupled with disturbances in autonomic regulation, might constitute the underlying pathophysiological mechanism behind the obtained effect. Available databases involving patient records of routine VH assessment may constitute a valuable asset in disentangling the interplay of cardiac and ventilatory interoceptive information in various patient groups, providing thorough clinical data to parse, as well as increased statistical power and estimates of effects with higher precision through large-scale studies.