Cardiac vagal control as a marker of emotion regulation in healthy adults: A review

Toward a social psychophysiology of vagally mediated heart rate variability: Concepts and methods in self‐regulation, emotion, and interpersonal processes

“…A wide‐ranging and rapidly growing body of research on self‐regulation, emotion, and interpersonal processes examines parasympathetic nervous system activity, measured as heart rate variability (HRV). As described in recent reviews (Balzarotti, Biassoni, Colombo, & Ciceri, ; Beauchaine et al, ; Laborde, Mosley, & Thayer, ), HRV is broadly related to adaptive functioning, suggesting robust parasympathetic correlates of several adjustment processes. Further, because HRV also predicts physical health, this parasympathetic mechanism could contribute to the association of emotional adjustment, social functioning, and self‐regulation with subsequent health (Hillebrand et al, ; Thayer & Lane, ; Thayer, Yamamoto, & Brosschot, ; Williams, Koenig et al, 2019).…”

“…The general prediction that threat and other psychological stressors evoke decreases in vmHRV has extensive support (Balzarotti et al, 2017;Kim, Cheon, Bai, Lee, & Koo, 2018). For example, various social-evaluative threats evoke acute decreases in vmHRV (Allen & Friedman, 2016;Bosch et al, 2009), as do social interactions that involve threats to social status (Cloutier, Norman, Li, & Berntson, 2013;Cundiff, Smith, Baron, & Uchino, 2016;Kraus & Mendes, 2014), interpersonal conflicts (D'Antono, Moskowitz, Miners, & Archambault, 2005), and effortful attempts to influence interaction partners (Nealey, Smith, & Uchino, 2002;Smith, Ruiz, & Uchino, 2000).…”

Mechanisms of mindfulness: Rumination and self-compassion

“…It is thus possible to question the specificity of vmHRV as a measure of emotion regulation capacity. Similarly, another recent meta-analytic investigation (Balzarotti, Biassoni, Colombo, & Ciceri, 2017) point out that several previous studies have failed to find a significant association between emotion regulation and vmHRV. However, they conclude that despite these conflicting results existing literature support the use of vmHRV as a biomarker of emotion regulation.…”

Heart Rate Variability Predicts Older Adults’ Avoidance of Negativity

“…A frequently used indicator of ANS functionality is heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of the variation in the time interval between successive heartbeats (Zygmunt & Stanczyk, 2010). In general, higher HRV is assumed to reflect more efficient ANS function (Balzarotti, Biassoni, Colombo, & Ciceri, 2017), indicating the capacity of the organism to effectively mobilize processing resources as and when required (Grossman & Taylor, 2007).…”