Abstract
Heart rate variability during sleep reflects the changes of autonomic nervous function which accompany the different underlying regulations. Sleep related breathing disorders affect heart rate variability during sleep in a characteristic way which is called cyclical variation of heart rate. In this study we tested two methods in order to separate the effect of sleep stages and the effect of sleep apnea on heart rate variability. We used spectral analysis based on 5-minute windows and detrended fluctuation analysis and derived parameters for sleep stages (wake, light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep) and apnea severity (no apnea, moderate apnea, severe apnea). Detrended fluctuation analysis yielded a better separation of sleep stages (74.4% correct assignments) and apnea severity (85.0% correct assignments) than spectral analysis.
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