Heart-rate and blood-pressure variability during psychophysiological tasks involving speech: influence of respiration

Beda, Alessandro, Jandre, F.C., Phillips, D.I., Giannella-Neto, A. and Simpson, D.M. (2007) Heart-rate and blood-pressure variability during psychophysiological tasks involving speech: influence of respiration. Psychophysiology, 44 (5), 767-778. (doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2007.00542.x).

Abstract

Changes in heart-rate and systolic arterial pressure variability (HRV and SAPV) indexes have been used in psychophysiology to assess autonomic activation, including during tasks involving speech. The current article clearly demonstrates in a sample of 25 adult subjects that the erratic and broadband respiratory patterns during such tasks violate the usual assumption that respiration is limited to the high-frequency band (0.15-0.4 Hz). For these tasks, interindividual differences and rest-task changes in HRV and SAPV in the low-frequency band (0.04-0.15 Hz) can be explained, to a large extent, by variations in the respiratory volume signal. This makes the use of HRV and SAPV as markers of autonomic function during these tasks highly questionable. Furthermore, a number of subjects with long respiratory period at rest were identified, whose presence in the sample can bias the estimation of baseline rest values.

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Contributors

Author: D.M. Simpson

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