Abstract
Heart rate variability (HRV) is regularly assessed in neuroimaging studies as an indicator of autonomic, emotional or cognitive processes. In this study, we investigated the influence of a loud and cramped environment during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on resting HRV measures. We compared recordings during functional MRI sessions with recordings in our autonomic laboratory (LAB) in 101 healthy subjects. In the LAB, we recorded an electrocardiogram (ECG) and a photoplethysmogram (PPG) over 15 min. During resting state functional MRI, we acquired a PPG for 15 min. We assessed anxiety levels before the scanning in each subject. In 27 participants, we performed follow-up sessions to investigate a possible effect of habituation. We found a high intra-class correlation ranging between 0.775 and 0.996, indicating high consistency across conditions. We observed no systematic influence of the MRI environment on any HRV index when PPG signals were analyzed. However, SDNN and RMSSD were significantly higher when extracted from the PPG compared to the ECG. Although we found a significant correlation of anxiety and the decrease in HRV from LAB to MRI, a familiarization session did not change the HRV outcome. Our results suggest that psychological factors are less influential on the HRV outcome during MRI than the methodological choice of the cardiac signal to analyze.
Highlights
Heart rate variability (HRV) is an established marker of all-cause morbidity and mortality [1,2]
We found a significant correlation of anxiety and the decrease in HRV from LAB to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a familiarization session did not change the HRV outcome
Our results suggest that psychological factors are less influential on the HRV outcome during MRI than the methodological choice of the cardiac signal to analyze
Summary
Heart rate variability (HRV) is an established marker of all-cause morbidity and mortality [1,2]. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with concurrent recordings of physiological signals has facilitated the identification of a network of brain regions that are involved in the central control of the heart [7,14,15]. These findings have corroborated and extended our understanding of the central autonomic network that was described decades ago mainly based on animal and lesion studies [16]
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