Beat-to-beat oscillations in heart-rate and systolic arterial-pressure are known to be modulated by the autonomic nervous system. Their characteristics are used in psychophysiology to assess the autonomic reaction to psychological/cognitive challenges (PC). However, factors other than autonomic modulation may strongly influence the estimation of these cardiovascular indexes (CI). Here, two such confounding factors were investigated in detail. First, the between-task and inter-individual differences in respiratory patterns, especially in PC involving speech were found to be strongly reflected...
Beat-to-beat oscillations in heart-rate and systolic arterial-pressure are known to be modulated by the autonomic nervous system. Their characteristic...