Fractal response of physiological signals to stress conditions, environmental changes, and neurodegenerative diseases

Abstract

AbstractIn the past two decades the biomedical community has witnessed several applications of nonlinear system theory to the analysis of biomedical time series and the development of nonlinear dynamic models. The development of this area of medicine can best be described as nonlinear and fractal physiology. These studies have been intended to develop more reliable methodologies for understanding how biological systems respond to peculiar altered conditions induced by internal stress, environment stress, and/or disease. Herein, we summarize the theory and some of our results showing the fractal dependency on different conditions of physiological signals such as inter‐breath intervals, heart inter‐beat intervals, and human stride intervals. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity 12: 12–17, 2007