PhD Scientific Days 2025

Poster Session III. - M: Mental Health Sciences

Spectral Parametrization of Heart Rate During Sleep in Healthy and Williams-syndrome Population

Name of the presenter

Schneider Bence

Institute/workplace of the presenter

Institute of Behavioural Sciences

Authors

Bence Schneider¹

1: Institute of Behavioural Sciences

Text of the abstract

The heart rate variability (HRV) index is known to have clinical relevance as an indicator of optimal neurocardiac regulation and psychophysiological well-being. HRV was formerly revealed to be parametrizable by power-law spectra, but not via broken power laws and additional oscillatory activity. In the present work a novel description of heartbeat variability is introduced, a parametric model of RR-interval power spectra had been employed, going beyond classical HRV analysis.

The aim of the study was to first establish reference parameter values of the RR power-spectra during sleep in a healthy population, then second, to explore differences between a group diagnosed with Williams syndrome (WS) and a control group, as HRV and sleep alterations were shown to reveal clinically meaningful information in WS.

After separating the aperiodic and oscillatory component of the spectrum, a piecewise defined power-law is fitted to the aperiodic component, resulting in a pair of slope and intercept parameters in the higher and lower frequency domains, separated at the breaking frequency. Furthermore the power and frequency of the most prominent spectral peak were also extracted from the oscillatory spectral component and considered as parameters.

First, applying our method to electrocardiography signals obtained from a polysomnography database of healthy subjects (N=251, 122 women, 4-69 years age range), the effects of age and sex on the model parameters were analyzed, while establishing reference values of these parameters. Significant effects of sex were found in all aperiodic parameters (increased in women), as well as in the frequency (increased in women) and power (decreased in women) of the most prominent spectral peak. Additionally a negative correlation was found between age and the breaking frequency of the spectrum. Second, the parameter differences were assessed between a group diagnosed with WS and a matched control group (N=42, 21 WS, age:6-29), exhibiting increased high-domain slope and intercept, decreased breaking frequency, peak frequency and power in WS.

The effects of age, sex and disorder group highlights the ability of our model to capture meaningful changes in heartbeat regulation.

Supported by the 2024-2.1.1-EKÖP-2024-00004, TKP2021-EGA-25 and TKP2021-NKTA-47