Resting Heart Rate Variability, Facets of Rumination and Trait Anxiety: Implications for the Perseverative Cognition Hypothesis

Abstract

The perseverative cognition hypothesis (PCH) posits that perseveration, defined as the repetitive or sustained activation of cognitive representations of a real or imagined stressor, is a primary mechanism linking psychological (or stress) vulnerability with poor health and disease. Resting vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) is an important indicator of self-regulatory abilities, stress vulnerability and overall health. Those with lower resting vmHRV are more vulnerable to stress, and thus more likely to engage in perseverative cognition and experience subsequent negative mental health outcomes such as anxiety. Recent research suggests that rumination—one of the core mechanisms underlying perseveration—is a construct containing (at least) two maladaptive (depressive and brooding) and one adaptive (reflective) types of rumination. However, to date, research has not examined how the association between resting vmHRV may differ between these three facets of rumination, in addition to these facets’ mechanistic role in linking lower resting vmHRV with greater trait anxiety. The current cross-sectional study explores these relationships in a sample of 203 participants (112 females, 76 ethnic minorities, mean age = 19.43, standard deviation = 1.87). Resting vmHRV was assessed during a 5-min-resting period using an Electrocardiogram (ECG). Both trait rumination (including the three facets) and anxiety were assessed via self-report scales. Significant negative associations were found between resting vmHRV and maladaptive, but not adaptive, forms of perseveration. Similarly, mediation analyses showed a significant indirect relationship between resting vmHRV and anxiety through maladaptive, but not adaptive, facets of rumination. Our findings support the PCH such that those with stress vulnerability, as indexed by lower resting vmHRV, are more likely to engage in maladaptive perseverative cognition and thus experience negative outcomes such as anxiety. Our data also lend a novel outlook on the PCH; resting vmHRV is not related to reflective rumination and thus, this facet of perseveration may be a neutral, but not beneficial, factor in the link between stress vulnerability and psychological well-being.

Ruminative minds, wandering minds: Effects of rumination and mind wandering on lexical associations, pitch imitation and eye behaviour

“…Rumination, as a type of MW which tends to be fixed on a single theme or topic and is marked by a high degree of automatic constraints [ 33 ], attenuates the normal variation in speaker’s pitch in relation to a conversation partner’s pitch. This falls in line with research that has associated rumination with reduced variability in physiological cues, including heart rate variability, which suggests rumination is associated with higher levels of cognitive inflexibility [ 17 , 95 – 97 ]. Our study is novel in that it demonstrates that rumination not only predicts reduced variability in physiological cues, it also attenuates pitch imitation which occurs during interactions.…”

Mechanisms of mindfulness: Rumination and self-compassion

“…There are indications that negative stress indicators more strongly predict level of vmHRV than positive, competence measures (Silvia, Jackson, & Sopko, 2014; P. Williams et al, 2017). This may represent another explanation why selfcompassion associates stronger with higher vmHRV than mindfulness in our study, due to the greater focus on suffering in self-compassion.…”

The influence of heart rate variability biofeedback on cardiac regulation and functional brain connectivity

“…A number of studies also showed that HRV biofeedback reduces self-reported stress and anxiety with a large effect size that does not seem to be limited to a clinical level of anxiety [16]. Based on previous findings, linking high HRV to better response inhibition and emotion regulation [33][34][35], Mather & Thayer (2018) hypothesized that HRV biofeedback enhances interactions in emotion regulatory brain regions. Core brain regions that are involved in the experience and perception of emotions are the anterior insula, the amygdala, and the cingulate cortex [36].…”