Executive Cognitive Functioning and Cardiovascular Autonomic Regulation in a Population-Based Sample of Working Adults

Abstract

Objective: Executive cognitive functioning is essential in private and working life and is sensitive to stress and aging. Cardiovascular (CV) health factors are related to cognitive decline and dementia, but there is relatively few studies of the role of CV autonomic regulation, a key component in stress responses and risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), and executive processes. An emerging pattern of results from previous studies suggest that different executive processes may be differentially associated with CV autonomic regulation. The aim was thus to study the associations between multiple measures of CV autonomic regulation and measures of different executive cognitive processes.Method: Participants were 119 healthy working adults (79% women), from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health. Electrocardiogram was sampled for analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) measures, including the Standard Deviation of NN, here heart beats (SDNN), root of the mean squares of successive differences (RMSSD), high frequency (HF) power band from spectral analyses, and QT variability index (QTVI), a measure of myocardial repolarization patterns. Executive cognitive functioning was measured by seven neuropsychological tests. The relationships between CV autonomic regulation measures and executive cognitive measures were tested with bivariate and partial correlational analyses, controlling for demographic variables, and mental health symptoms.Results: Higher SDNN and RMSSD and lower QTVI were significantly associated with better performance on cognitive tests tapping inhibition, updating, shifting, and psychomotor speed. After adjustments for demographic factors however (age being the greatest confounder), only QTVI was clearly associated with these executive tests. No such associations were seen for working memory capacity.Conclusion: Poorer CV autonomic regulation in terms of lower SDNN and RMSSD and higher QTVI was associated with poorer executive cognitive functioning in terms of inhibition, shifting, updating, and speed in healthy working adults. Age could largely explain the associations between the executive measures and SDNN and RMSSD, while associations with QTVI remained. QTVI may be a useful measure of autonomic regulation and promising as an early indicator of risk among otherwise healthy adults, compared to traditional HRV measures, as associations between QTVI and executive functioning was not affected by age.

The Structure of Self-Regulation and Its Psychological and Physical Health Correlates in Older Adults

“…Age-related decrease in neural control of heart rate has been observed: inactivation of the prefrontal cortex resulted in heart rate increases in younger but not older patients . One alternative measure of cardiovascular autonomic regulation that does not appear to be affected by age and is associated with markers of executive function (inhibition, shifting, updating, and context maintenance) is the QT variability index (Stenfors et al, 2016).…”

Relationship between Cognitive and Sleep–wake Variables in Asymptomatic Offspring of Patients with Late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease

“…More specifically, greater sympathetic prevalence [as denoted by increased low frequency/high frequency (L/H)] at night was associated with more widespread poor results in cognition, including not only verbal memory but overall cognition (as reflected in the MMSE score) and visuospatial/executive function (clock drawing score).A potential link between abnormal sleep–wake variation and poor cognition in the present sample of O-LOAD might be the reported association between reduced parasympathetic activity and decreased sleep quality (Burton et al, 2010), which in turn predicts cognitive decline (Mander et al, 2016). Another potential link may be the increased susceptibility to stress (e.g., Stenfors et al, 2016). However, normal anxiety and depression symptomatology in O-LOAD argue against this possibility.…”

Heart Rate Variability Predicts Older Adults’ Avoidance of Negativity

“…In young adults, high levels of resting HRV have been found to primarily predict inhibitory control (Stenfors, Hanson, Theorell, & Osika, 2016), including improved memory suppression in a think/no-think paradigm (Gillie et al, 2014), inhibition of prepotent responses (Krypotos, Jahfari, van Ast, Kindt, & Forstmann, 2011) particularly in tasks requiring rapid changes in cognitive strategies (Colzato & Steenbergen, 2017), as well as greater persistence during an anagram task (Segerstrom & Nes, 2007; but see Luque-Casado, Zabala, Morales, Mateo-March, & Sanabria, 2013, for no association between HRV and executive control in young adults). Additionally, resting HRV is a reliable index of emotion regulation efficiency (Balzarotti et al, 2017;Thayer & Lane, 2009).…”