Neighborhood stress and autonomic nervous system activity during sleep

Sleep and circadian influences on cardiac autonomic nervous system activity.

To assess the separate contributions of the sleep and circadian systems to changes in cardiac autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity, 12 supine subjects participated in two 26-h constant routines, which were counterbalanced and separated by 1 wk. One routine did not permit sleep, whereas the second allowed the subjects to sleep during their normal sleep phase. Parasympathetic nervous system ac...

Changes in Autonomic Nervous System Activity and in Electro-Cortical Activity during Sleep Onset

This study is aimed at investigating the behavior of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) at Sleep Onset (SO) and to correlate it with higher brain activity captured as surface Electroencephalogram (EEG). The study was performed on data obtained from 16 healthy subjects who underwent standard polysomnography (PSG). The instantaneous Heart Rate Variability (HRV) provided a measure of ANS activity,...

Measuring autonomic nervous system activity

Autonomic nervous system activity distinguishes among emotions.

Emotion-specific activity in the autonomic nervous system was generated by constructing facial prototypes of emotion muscle by muscle and by reliving past emotional experiences. The autonomic activity produced distinguished not only between positive and negative emotions, but also among negative emotions. This finding challenges emotion theories that have proposed autonomic activity to be undif...

Involvement of Autonomic Nervous Activity Changes in Gastroesophageal Reflux in Neonates during Sleep and Wakefulness

BACKGROUND It has been suggested that disturbed activity of the autonomic nervous system is one of the factors involved in gastroesophageal reflux (GER) in adults. We sought to establish whether transient ANS dysfunction (as assessed by heart rate variability) is associated with the occurrence of GER events in neonates during sleep and wakefulness. METHODS Nineteen neonates with suspected GER...