Max Planck School of Cognition, Leipzig, Germany.
Department of Neurology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
Psychophysiology. 2024 Dec;61(12):e14696. doi: 10.1111/psyp.14696. Epub 2024 Oct 14.
The subjective experience of emotions is linked to the contextualized perception and appraisal of changes in bodily (e.g., heart) activity. Increased emotional arousal has been related to attenuated high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), lower EEG parieto-occipital alpha power, and higher heartbeat-evoked potential (HEP) amplitudes. We studied emotional arousal-related brain-heart interactions using immersive virtual reality (VR) for naturalistic yet controlled emotion induction. Twenty-nine healthy adults (13 women, age: 26 ± 3) completed a VR experience that included rollercoasters while EEG and ECG were recorded. Continuous emotional arousal ratings were collected during a video replay immediately after. We analyzed emotional arousal-related changes in HF-HRV as well as in BHIs using HEPs. Additionally, we used the oscillatory information in the ECG and the EEG to model the directional information flows between the brain and heart activity. We found that higher emotional arousal was associated with lower HEP amplitudes in a left fronto-central electrode cluster. While parasympathetic modulation of the heart (HF-HRV) and parieto-occipital EEG alpha power were reduced during higher emotional arousal, there was no evidence for the hypothesized emotional arousal-related changes in bidirectional information flow between them. Whole-brain exploratory analyses in additional EEG (delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma) and HRV (low-frequency, LF, and HF) frequency bands revealed a temporo-occipital cluster, in which higher emotional arousal was linked to decreased brain-to-heart (i.e., gamma→HF-HRV) and increased heart-to-brain (i.e., LF-HRV → gamma) information flow. Our results confirm previous findings from less naturalistic experiments and suggest a link between emotional arousal and brain-heart interactions in temporo-occipital gamma power.
情绪的主观体验与身体（例如心脏）活动变化的情境感知和评价有关。情绪唤醒增加与高频心率变异性（HF-HRV）降低、顶枕部 EEG 阿尔法功率降低和心跳诱发电位（HEP）幅度增加有关。我们使用沉浸式虚拟现实（VR）进行自然但受控的情感诱导，研究与情绪唤醒相关的大脑-心脏相互作用。29 名健康成年人（女性 13 名，年龄：26±3）完成了包括过山车在内的 VR 体验，同时记录 EEG 和 ECG。在视频回放后立即收集连续的情绪唤醒评分。我们分析了 HF-HRV 以及使用 HEP 分析与 BHIs 相关的情绪唤醒变化。此外，我们使用 ECG 和 EEG 中的振荡信息来模拟大脑和心脏活动之间的定向信息流。我们发现，在左额中央电极簇中，较高的情绪唤醒与较低的 HEP 幅度相关。虽然在较高的情绪唤醒时，心脏的副交感神经调节（HF-HRV）和顶枕部 EEG 阿尔法功率降低，但没有证据表明假设的情绪唤醒相关的它们之间的双向信息流变化。在额外的 EEG（德尔塔、西塔、阿尔法、贝塔和伽马）和 HRV（低频、LF 和 HF）频带的全脑探索性分析中，发现了一个颞枕部集群，在该集群中，较高的情绪唤醒与大脑到心脏的信息减少（即伽马→HF-HRV）和心脏到大脑的信息增加（即 LF-HRV→伽马）相关。我们的结果证实了以前在不太自然的实验中的发现，并表明情绪唤醒与颞枕部伽马功率的大脑-心脏相互作用之间存在联系。
