Long-range correlations in heart rate variability during computer-mouse work under time pressure

The aim of this study was to investigate the influences of time pressure on long-range correlations in heart rate variability (HRV), the effects of relaxation on the cardiovascular regulation system and the advantages of detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) over the conventional power spectral analysis in discriminating states of the cardiovascular systems under different levels of time pressure. Volunteer subjects (n=10, male/female=5/5) participated in a computer-mouse task consisting of five sessions, i.e. baseline session (BSS) which was free of time pressure, followed by sessions with 80% (SS80), 100% (SS100), 90% (SS90) and 150% (SS150) of the baseline time. Electrocardiogram (ECG) and task performance were recorded throughout the experiments. Two rest sessions before and after the computer-mouse work, i.e. RS1 and RS2, were also recorded as comparison. HRV series were subsequently analyzed by both conventional power spectral analysis and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). The long-term scaling exponent α₂ by DFA was significantly lower in SS80 than that in other sessions. It was also found that short-term release of time pressure had positive influences on the cardiovascular system, i.e. the α₂ in RS2 was significantly higher than that in SS80, SS100 and SS90. No significant differences were found between any two sessions by conventional power spectral analysis. Our results showed that DFA performed better in discriminating the states of cardiovascular autonomic modulation under time pressure than the conventional power spectral analysis.