The development of a computerized system in the MATLAB environment that integrates the hitherto accumulated knowledge of the psychophysiological mechanisms of heart rate regulation in the form of a formalized personalized model may facilitate further research and reveal new features of heart rate regulation that would be useful in practice. The computer system could be applied to health care, medicine, psychology, and research of the heart-brain connection. For example, to optimize the vagus nerve stimulation with feedback; interpreting psychophysiological data of wearable devices, developing diagnostic biomarkers based on heart rate variability.
The aim of the research project is to develop a computerized system for research based on a heart rate regulation model that incorporates levels higher than those associated with respiratory arrhythmia and baroreflex.
Tasks:
1. To develop an algorithmic model of heart rate regulation that incorporates levels higher than those associated with respiratory arrhythmia and baroreflex.
2. To implement and test a computerized system that integrates the developed model, biosignal acquisition and data processing algorithms.
Project funding:
This research project is funded by the European Social Fund according to the 2014–2020 Operational Programme for the European Union Funds’ Investments, under measure’s No. 09.3.3-LMT-K-712 activity “Promotion of postdoctoral fellowships studies”.
Project results:
• two scientific articles in peer-reviewed publications with a citation index in the Web of Science database;
• published software of the computerized system with a heart rate regulation model in an open source repository;
• presentation at an international conference.
• Poster: Baranauskas M, Lukoševičius A. “Heart rate regulation model to capture fluctuating higher-order influence by brain during emotional tasks” at an international conference “Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Regional Meeting” in 2021 August 25-27
• Article: Baranauskas M, Grabauskaitė A, Griškova-Bulanova I, Lataitytė-Šimkevičienė B, Stanikūnas R. “Heartbeat evoked potentials (HEP) capture brain activity affecting subsequent heartbeat”. Biomedical Signal Processing and Control. 2021;68:102731. DOI: 10.1016/j.bspc.2021.102731. URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1746809421003281
• Article: Baranauskas M, Stanikūnas R, Kaniušas E, Lukoševičius A. “Model based concept to extract heart beat-to-beat variations beyond respiratory arrhythmia and baroreflex”. bioRxiv. 2023:2023.03.23.534047. DOI: 10.1101/2023.03.23.534047. URL: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.23.534047
• Computerized system “Ritminukas” with graphical user interface that integrates the heart rate regulation model. Software code published in open source repository “Zenodo”. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7765459. URL: https://zenodo.org/record/7765459
Period of project implementation: 2020-09-01 - 2023-02-28
Project coordinator: Kaunas University of Technology
