Page 72 - BH-2-4

Brain & Heart

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Rapid assessment of cardiac autonomic

modulation and adaptive stress responses:
Automatic calculation of time-varying

parasympathetic, sympathetic, and Baevsky
stress indexes

Donatella Brisinda 1,2,3† * , Marco Picerni , Peter Fenici 1,3 , and
3
Riccardo Fenici *
3†
1 Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Faculty of School of Medicine and Surgery, Rome, Italy
2 Department of Ageing, Neurosciences, Head-Neck, and Orthopaedics Sciences. Fondazione
Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy
3 Biomagnetism and Clinical Physiology International Center, Associazione Biomagnetismo Sport
Serenità e Salute, Rome, Italy

† These authors contributed equally Abstract
to this work.
Cardiac autonomic modulation (CAM), which is regulated by the balance
*Corresponding authors:
Riccardo Fenici between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, is involved in
(riccardo.fenici@unicatt.it) various physiological and pathological conditions. Heart rate variability (HRV)
Donatella Brisinda analysis has been used to explore the complex relationship between the brain
(donatella.brisinda@unicatt.it)
and heart, as described by Porges’ polyvagal theory and Thayer’s neurovisceral
Citation: Brisinda D, Picerni M, integration model. Recently, an automated calculation of new parasympathetic,
Fenici P, Fenici R. Rapid
assessment of cardiac autonomic sympathetic, and Baevsky stress indexes based on HRV parameters has been
modulation and adaptive stress introduced for faster and more comprehensive CAM assessment, though their
responses: Automatic calculation normal ranges remain undefined. This study aimed to determine the average
of time-varying parasympathetic,
sympathetic, and Baevsky values of these indexes in a healthy population of different ages during rest,
stress indexes. Brain & Heart. daily activities, non-rapid eye movement sleep, graded physical effort, and acute
2024;2(4):3503. psychophysiological stress. At rest, the parasympathetic and sympathetic indexes
doi: 10.36922/bh.3503
were consistently within the proposed normal range and inversely related.
Received: April 25, 2024 However, Baevsky stress index values from Kubios were higher than expected,
Accepted: August 26, 2024 conflicting with the assumption that they are simply the square root of those
calculated using the original formula. Despite this, time-varying assessment of all
Published Online: October 9, 2024
indexes can provide valuable insights into CAM adaptation during physical effort
Copyright: © 2024 Author(s). and acute psychophysiological stress in real-world critical situations. Notably,
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the our novel finding shows that the inverse correlation between parasympathetic
Creative Commons Attribution and sympathetic/stress indexes under stress is better explained by non-linear
License, permitting distribution, functions, offering a potential new measure of brain–heart interaction during
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is real-life critical events.
properly cited.
Publisher’s Note: AccScience Keywords: Heart rate variability; Autonomic nervous system; Sympathetic nervous
Publishing remains neutral with system; Parasympathetic nervous system; Baevsky stress index; Psychophysiological
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional stress
affiliations.

Volume 2 Issue 4 (2024) 1 doi: 10.36922/bh.3503