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Like many organs in the body, the heart is dually innervated. Although a wide range of physiologic factors determine cardiac functions such as heart rate (HR), the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is the most prominent. Resting cardiac autonomic balance favors energy conservation by way of parasympathetic dominance over sympathetic influences. In addition, the HR time series is characterized by beat-to-beat variability over a wide range, which also implicates vagal dominance as the sympathetic influence on the heart is too slow to produce beat-to-beat changes. There is an increasing interest in the study of this heart rate variability (HRV) among researchers from diverse fields. Low HRV is associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality and has been proposed as a marker for disease. In the following, I will briefly describe the nature and assessment of HRV.
Heart Rate Variability
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References and Readings
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Thayer, J.F. (2013). Heart Rate Variability. In: Gellman, M.D., Turner, J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_805
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