The Possibility to Identify The Importance of HRV Studies in Analysis of Our Mental Entities.

By Sander Kales, D.O.-MRO, M.Sc.

Introduction

When Descartes started his writing’s on the division of mind and matter, he could not have foreseen the length to which this was taken. Not only in medicine is there a division between the mind (psychology) and matter (biology). Also in our everyday lives we make this division. We live in our world of thoughts, or are confronted with the sensations of our body. Our understanding of our mental lives has led us to think that it is our brain that generates emotions and feelings. 2014 will be the year of the brain in Europe so neurologists and neuropsychologists are more and more on the forefront of medical development and we will start forgetting what our bodies are for.

On the other hand, the latest research on heart rhythms, have shown that it is our physiology which leads to emotions, which leads to feelings, which leads to thinking. Our mental activity is founded upon our physiology. In the works of McCraty this has been demonstrated (McCraty 2006, McCraty, Atkinson et al. 2006). The activity of our heart influences directly the state of our brain. Thus the seperation between our mind and our body becomes blurred. We cannot seperate mind and matter anymore.

In this article, the current assumption that it is our mental activity, that influences our Heart Rate Variability will be renounced. But taking this even further, the generation of the heart rate variability is based on the information from our body. This is what is expressed in the variability. Current methods of studying HRV, such as the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) which is a linear method will not be sufficient to explain this connection between our bodily functions, such as the state of functioning of our kidneys, and the HRV. New methods, like the Conte Ziblut Federici (CZF) method (Conte, Federici et al. 2009), which is based on non-linear methodology, are able to show this connection.

Emotions, Feelings and Physiology.

We are all familiar with the term: ”it has a visceral feel to it” . In our language we our confronted with this connection between our physiology and our emotions: “it makes me sick to my stomach”, “I have butterflies in my belly”, etc. There is a distinction between emotions (or Energy in motion) and feelings, the former being the sensation of our physiology, and the latter is more the association of brain patterns to the bodily patterns (Lane 2008). We describe this bodily sensation and associate all kinds of mental phenomena to it. So our thoughts arise from within us and are based on our bodies patterns.

The mind-Body connection.

McCraty has demonstrated that a change in HRV corresponds with different emotional states. He differentiated the four basic modes: Mental Focus, Psychophysiological Incoherence, Relaxation and Psychophysiological Coherence. Besides these four modes, which he has shown to be basic axis on which we can draw our emotional functioning, there are two more modes: Positive Hyperstate or Emotional Quiescence and Negative Hyperstate of Negative Emotional State (McCraty, Atkinson et al. 2006).

The differentiation of these emotions into for instance acceptance, grief, etc. goes beyond the possibilities of his type of research. This could be because he uses a FFT, linear method, with which he cannot describe the subtleties of the HRV. It is like transforming a piece of Mozart into basic chords. This is an oversimplification of what Mozart’s music is like, and in that sense what our heart functioning is like. Nonlinear methods are better able to grasp this kind of “music”.

Heart beats

The classical notion is that the heart is a pump. Chitty has demonstrated that the heart is more an integrator of several types of information: haemodynamics, hormonal, electromagnetically, electrically, etc (Chitty 2010). Every heart beat is a taking up of information and changing the parameters slightly. With each ejection phase the direction of the vortex is slightly changed so that blood receives information and through this new vortex, will arrive at the place it needs to be (for instance the kidney’s). In embryonic development of the heart wall, it is demonstrated that the vortices form the trabeculae.

Goncharenko went even further (Goncharenko 2003). In studies of thrombi in baboons, he demonstrated that the thrombus originating from a particular part of the wall of the heart, will always end up in a certain place (for instance the left iliac artery). He studied this in a lot of baboons and was able to come up with a somatotopy of the body on the walls of the heart.

Interesting in this study is that a small change of the contractility of a particular part of the heart wall will result in a change in the electrical conductivity of that part. This will result in a different contraction, and thus a different distance to the R top on the ECG. Thus the HRV will come into place.

So now we can deduce that this change in contraction as a result(!) of different information from a peripheral organ (for instance the kidney) will result in differences in R-R intervals and also account for the dynamics of the HRV.

Measurement of HRV

The classical method of measuring the HRV is through first measuring the distance between the R-R intervals. This interval is than put in a Tachograph, where you can see the fluctuations of the intervals between the heart beats, also called: a time analysis. This is a linear method of measuring. Conte et al. have shown that already here we can apply the principles of Quantum Mechanics and measure not just the change between subsequent beats but also the change between the first and the second, between the first and the third, etc. This will result in a non-linear analysis and give more results (Giuliani, Giudice et al. 1996, Conte, Federici et al. 2009).

The next step in the data processing is taking the frequencies that compile to make up the fluctuations of the tachogram and transforming them into a Power Density Spectrum. When you look at the fluctuations of the HRV you can imagine that it is a combination of all sorts of frequencies, ranging from .04 Hz to .9 Hz. The number of times a certain frequency is there, it will be added up and put into a PSD. This transformation is done on the basis of a frequency analysis: a Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT). Again here a linear method is used, because of the standard frequencies. It is like taking the accords of a Mozart piece and concluding that, that is the music piece, instead of noting that one “off” note that makes the piece dynamic, and not just a static rhythm. This last can be done through the CZF method.

After the PDS is made, several major frequency bands are distinguished, of which the Very Low Frequency (VLF), the Low Frequency (LF) and the High Frequency (HF) are the major ones. These frequency bands have been associated with the functioning of the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS): VLF, the Baroreceptor system: LF and the Para Sympathetic Nervous System (PSNS): HF. McCraty has based his emotional grid on the functioning of these nervous systems.

Because of the possibilities of the CZF measuring method, more information is taken from the HRV. This information can than be investigated to see if it correlates with for instance a kidney, spleen, liver, etc. disfunction. We can start to investigate if the stimulation of one organ function will result in a change in HRV. This can only be done through the CZF method, and not the traditional FFT.

Conclusion

It has been demonstrated that our HRV is comprised of several factors originating in the body. This information is than the foundation for the development of “emotions” which will later on be transformed into feelings and thinking. Thus an anxious person, with a certain cortisol expression from his kidney glands, will have a certain HRV, as can be measured through the CZF method. This will result in the feeling of being “anxious”. We can even question where the memory of a previous episode of anxiousness is stored; is it in the brian, or in a certain pattern of the kidney glands. This non-locality of information is what Conte has investigated with the quantum foundations of our thinking. Thus it would be interesting to redo the experiments of McCraty with the CZF method and than elaborate on them to see if specific emotions show specific frequencies on the PSD. 

Bibliografie

Chitty, J. (2010). "The Heart is not a Pump." from www.energyschool.com.

Conte, E., A. Federici and J. P. Zbilut (2009). "A new method based on fractal variance function for analysis and quantification of sympathetic and vagal activity in variability of R–R time series in ECG signals." Chaos, Solitons & Fractals 41(3): 1416-1426.

Giuliani, A., P. L. Giudice, A. M. Maneini, G. Quatrini, L. Pacifici, J. Charles L. Webber, M. Zak and J. P. Zbilut (1996). "A Markovian formalization of heart rate dynamics evinces a quantum-like hypothesis." Biological Cybernetics 74: 7.

Goncharenko, A. I. (2003). "Conjugated heart ties." 'Delphis' Journal 3: 6.

Lane, R. D. (2008). "Neural Substrates of Implicit and Explicit Emotional Processes: A Unifying Framework for Psychosomatic Medicine." Psychosomatic Medicine 70(2): 214-231.

McCraty, R. (2006). "Coherent Heart deel 1."

McCraty, R., M. Atkinson, D. Tomasino and R. T. Bradley (2006). The Coherent Heart (part 2). California, USA, HeartMath Research Centre, Institute of HeartMath: 37.

McCraty, R., M. Atkinson, D. Tomasino and R. T. Bradley (2006). The Coherent Heart: Heart-brain interactions, psychophysiological coherence, and the emergency of the system-wide order (part 1). California, USA, HeartMath Research Centre, Institute of HeartMath: 29.