Topic: heart rate

Decades of research have investigated the relationship between perception of time and heart rate with often mixed results. In search of such a relationship, I will present my far journey between two projects: from time perception in the realistic VR experience of crowded subway trips in the order of minutes (project 1); to the perceived duration of sub-second white noise tones (project 2). Heart rate had multiple concurrent relationships with subjective temporal distortions for the sub-second tones, while the effects were lacking or weak for the supra-minute subway trips. What does the heart h

In most animals including in humans, emotions occur together with changes in the body, such as variations in breathing or heart rate, sweaty palms, or facial expressions. It has been suggested that this interoceptive information acts as a feedback signal to the brain, enabling adaptive modulation of emotions that is essential for survival. As such, fear, one of our basic emotions, must be kept in a functional balance to minimize risk-taking while allowing for the pursuit of essential needs. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this adaptive modulation of fear remain poorly understood. In

Respiratory dysfunction, particularly central apnea, accompanied by cardiac abnormalities are proposed to be the underlying causes of Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). Apnea in SUDEP is characterised by prologued hypercapnia with severe hypoventilation. We propose that this implies an impairment at the level of central CO2 chemoreception (CCR) drive for breathing which is coupled with cardiodysregulation. CCR can be quantified with ventilatory response to hypercapnic challenge and has not been previously studied in a chronic model of temporal lobe epilepsy, in which SUDEP may be obs