Dynamic Cardiovagal Response to Motion Sickness: A Point-Process Heart Rate Variability Study

Abstract

A visual display of stripes was used to examine cardio-vagal response to motion sickness. Heart rate variability (HRV) was investigated using dynamic methods to discern instantaneous fluctuations in reaction to stimulus and perception-based events. A novel point process adaptive recursive algorithm was applied to the R-R series to compute instantaneous heart rate, HRV, and high frequency (HF) power as a marker of vagal activity. Results show interesting dynamic trends in each of the considered subjects. HF power averaged across ten subjects indicates a significant decrease 20s to 60s following the transition from “no nausea” to “mild.” Conversely, right before “strong” nausea, the group average shows a transient trending increase in HF power. Findings confirm gradual sympathetic activation with increasing nausea, and further evidence transitory increases in vagal tone before flushes of strong nausea.