Abstract
The present study aimed to provide further evidence on the usefulness of non-linear cardiac measures when examining the output of the cardiac system. Scale-invariant self-similarity and entropy, in addition to heart rate variability (HRV) given by time- and frequency-domain measures were calculated in a sample of N = 55 healthy adolescents (Mage = 14.122, SDage = 0.698) during 10-min positive (non-stressful) and negative (stressful) interactions with their mothers. We also explored sex influence in adolescents’ cardiac output using both HRV measures and non-linear cardiac measures. Repeated measures MANOVA revealed a marginal within-group effect for HRV measures, F(3,51) = 2.438, p = 0.075, η2p = 0.125), and a significant within-group effect for non-linear cardiac measures, F(6, 48) = 3.296, p = 0.009, η2p = 0.292, showing a significant decrement in adolescents’ cardiac complexity during the negative interaction. No significant effect for sex was found in either non-linear cardiac measures or HRV measures, but results suggest lower cardiac scaling in females than in males. These findings suggest a real-time scale predominance in heart rate output when adolescents face an aversive situation and support the importance of non-linear cardiac measures to gain insight into the cardiac system and its regulatory mechanisms. Further research is needed to examine sex-differences in cardiac complexity during aversive situations.
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Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Code availability
The code used to calculate some of the nonlinear measures in this study is available upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to Jordi Penalva Vadell from the Department of Mathematics for his assistance with non-linear analysis.
Funding
This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), the State Research Agency (AEI), and the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF) [grant number PSI2016‐78403‐P (MINECO/AEI/ERDF, EU)].
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Roman-Juan, J., Bornas, X., Zuzama, N. et al. Decrements in Adolescent Cardiac Complexity During Mother-Adolescent Conflicts. Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback 46, 259–270 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10484-021-09513-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10484-021-09513-3