Abstract.Heart rate variability (HRV) is a common measure of the autonomic modulation of the heart. To ensure accuracy, various external factors known to affect HRV such as medication use and concurrent illnesses are frequently controlled during measurement. While the influences of such confounds on accurate measurement of HRV are accepted, the influence of seemingly innocuous daily activities such as drinking and eating have received remarkably little attention. In fact, water consumption is known to provoke a powerful pressor stimulus that is buffered by changes in cardiovagal outflow yet it is sporadically controlled during experimentation. This paper examines the dose-dependent magnitude of the effect of water on HRV, the loss of HRV during a common attentional task after water consumption, and the typical scenario of water and mixed meal ingestion. Our findings show that water affects HRV in a dosedependent manner, and exaggerates attentionally-mediated HRV reduction. This effect is antagonised by simultaneous mixed meal consumption, which strongly increases cardiac sympathetic activity. Water consumption during or previous to HRV measurement should be carefully controlled, if possible.Considering the diverse nature of experimental protocols and populations, we suggest a hierarchy of methods to control for water consumption in HRV research.
is often defined as a multicomponent response to a significant stimulus characterized by brain and body arousal and a subjective feeling state, eliciting a tendency toward motivated action. This chapter reviews the neuroscience of emotion, especially highlighting a psychological constructionist approach that considers certain events to result from the interplay of basic neurophysiological operations not specific to emotion. The authors adopt an embodied cognition perspective, highlighting the importance of the whole body-not just the brain-to better understand the biological basis of emotion and drawing on influential theories, including Polyvagal Theory and the Somatic Marker Hypothesis, which emphasize the importance of bidirectional communication between viscera and brain, and the impact of visceral responses on subjective feeling state and decision making, respectively. Embodied cognition has important implications for understanding emotion, and the authors emphasise the need for further research that draws on affective computing principles and focuses on objective measures of body and brain to further elucidate the specificity of different emotional states.
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