[Criteria of heart rate response measurements in psychosomatic diagnosis]

The central function of the cardiovascular system in the internal homeostasis of the human organism and in the externally directed adaptive and transformative processes explains the importance of this system in psychophysiological investigations. At the same time it is apparent, that the functional complexity leads to methodological difficulties in the analysis of stimulus-response relationships. Using heart-rate-response to acoustical stimuli a variety of factors influencing form and extent of cardiovascular responses are discussed as there permit an explanation of varying results in psychophysiological studies on this topic. Two habituation experiments with a total of 100 subjects were used to analyse the depending of heart-rate upon type and intensity of stimuli and associated systemic variations with varying states of activation. An alternative method of measurement is presented which consideres the timing of heart-rate reaction, thus avoiding to undue the temporal coherence of the components of heart-rate response. This method offers the possibility for a real-time-comparison between different autonomic functions.