Heart‐rate and blood‐pressure variability during psychophysiological tasks involving speech: Influence of respiration

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.

Considerations in the assessment of heart rate variability in biobehavioral research

“…For instance, healthy participants occasionally breathe at frequencies slower than 0.15 Hz (up to 35% of participants; Hoit and Lohmeier, 2000; Beda et al, 2007; Pinna et al, 2007) – this has also been observed in physically fit individuals (Saboul et al, 2014). Breathing below 0.15 Hz dramatically increases the observed power of RSA over that of typical breathing frequencies due to the involvement of the baroreflex.…”

Resting-state high-frequency heart rate variability is related to respiratory frequency in individuals with severe mental illness but not healthy controls

“…This is especially important to monitor in populations known to have slower (e.g., athletes32) or faster (e.g., children and adolescents33) respiratory frequencies. Indeed, up to one in five individuals in a sample of healthy participants have been shown to breathe at frequencies slower than 0.15 Hz, which equates to one breath every 6.7 seconds34. Including such participants would violate normal cardiorespiratory assumptions if conventional HF-HRV spectral frequency bands are used.…”

Body size at birth and cardiovascular response to and recovery from mental stress in children

“…In speech tasks HF HRV is less efficient, a marker of autonomic function than in non-speech tasks. 36 In addition, responses to psychological stress in children are thought mainly to reflect changes in vascular resistance, and chronotropic or inotropic influences in the heart are lower than in adults. 18,37 One limitation in our study is that we had to rely on indirect measures of CV activity.…”