Airways, respiration, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia during picture viewing

Abstract

Emotional stimuli can cause airway constriction; however, it is uncertain whether a dimensional or categorical model of emotion can better describe airway changes. Also, little is known about the affective modulation of respiration and vagal activity, which can influence airway tone. We studied changes in oscillatory resistance (Ros), respiration, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in asthmatics and controls during viewing of affective pictures eliciting anxiety, depression, disgust, happiness, contentment, erotic tension, or neutral affect. Ros, respiration, cardiac activity, and self-report were measured during picture presentations. Ros increased monotonically with picture unpleasantness mainly due to disgust pictures. RSA and respiratory timing parameters were particularly sensitive to erotic pictures. Differences between asthmatics and controls were minimal, suggesting that airway responses to unpleasant pictures are not specific to asthma.

Assessing positive emotional states in dogs using heart rate and heart rate variability

“…This is in keeping with the lack of change in HR shown in humans when investigating physiological response to happiness induction with visual material such as pictures [36,37] or film clips [38]. Our results are also in agreement with [6] who found no average difference in HR for dogs when they were oriented towards their favourite toy.…”

“…We were able to increase the duration of the recording from 5 s to 20 s using a novel stitching method. To our knowledge there are four studies that analysed short HRV intervals [27,47,48,49]. While Valenza et al [49] suggested an advanced computerized method to estimate emotions of less than 10 s, we on the other hand propose a non-computerized stitching method as a potential tool to investigate short-time HRV.…”

Watching emotional movies: Affective reactions and gender differences

“…Similarly, in the present study, RSA was not affected by the emotional value of the stimuli. Ritz and collaborators (Ritz et al, 2000(Ritz et al, , 2005Ritz and Thöns, 2002) suggested that RSA might be burdened with too much measurement error to provide a reliable index of vagal activity in instances of relatively mild stimulation, and that more intense emotional activation than that provided by picture stimulation could lead to clearer results. Even though highly arousing pleasant and unpleasant films were used in the present study, our results did not seem to highlight any effect of an intense stimulation on RSA 4 .…”

Coherent with laughter: Subjective experience, behavior, and physiological responses during amusement and joy

“…Another study, also using film clips, found no difference in cardiovascular reactivity between amusement and contentment . Happiness (which may or may not be the same as joy, as noted earlier) has been associated with greater increases in HR than surprise (Cacioppo et al, 1998), and smaller increases in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) than sexual desire (Ritz et al, 2005). Studies of the effects of positive emotional stimuli on respiration rate and respiratory amplitude have revealed both increases and decreases in both of these indices (for review see Boiten et al, 1994).…”