Older people's cardiac responses as indicators of stress in familiar and unfamiliar environments

Abstract

Little is known about older people's physiological and emotional responses to environmental triggers. We examined this by estimating cardiac stress from heart rate variability (HRV). Thirty-eight participants were monitored while observing environmental scenarios at familiar and unfamiliar locations. Image scenarios included pedestrian and driving scenes in a random order. HRV indices including heart rate (HR), QT variability index (QTVI) and Total HRV Power (TP) were quantified. Familiar locations were associated with higher HR (p<.0005) and lower TP (p=.005) than unfamiliar locations, suggesting they were more stressful. HRV responses to pedestrian and driving scenarios indicated that stress was not influenced by either the type of image scenario or the order of image presentation. There were no gender-related differences in cardiac responses. HRV is a useful surrogate of cardiac stress when assessing older people's responses to their environments.

Assessing the needs of older people in urban settings: integration of emotive, physiological and built environment data

“…There is mounting evidence, including examples involving virtual environments (Jang et al . ), that quantitative measurement of HRV and QT is effective for assessing the role of lifestyle as well as clinical factors on cardiac autonomic nervous system (ANS) integrity [see discussion in Lewis and Phillips ()].…”

Periovulatory Subphase of the Menstrual Cycle Is Marked by a Significant Decrease in Heart Rate Variability

“…It better reflects the contributions of the parasympathetic nervous system, our primary interest, compared to other methods, such as SDNN [ 10 ], 2. It shows superior statistical properties to those of standard time and frequency domain methods [ 11 ], and, 3. It does not require correction for respiration frequency, simplifying data collection [ 11 , 12 ].…”

“…It shows superior statistical properties to those of standard time and frequency domain methods [ 11 ], and, 3. It does not require correction for respiration frequency, simplifying data collection [ 11 , 12 ].…”

Geographical distribution of reference value of aging people's left ventricular end systolic diameter based on the support vector regression

“…Human beings get the environmental adaptability of temperature, humidity and so on in order to maintain its normal body's function, it is called the process of acclimation. Heart as the power source of the human circulatory system, the functional parameters have their different responses under the different environmental stresses (Lewis and Phillips, 2012).…”