The heart of cognitive control: Cardiac phase modulates processing speed and inhibition

Abstract

Bodily states are heavily intertwined with cognitive processes. A prominent communication channel between bodily signals and brain structures is provided by baroreceptors. Their phasic activity associated with the cardiac phase has been shown to modulate cognitive control in socio‐emotional contexts. However, whether this effect is specific to the affective dimension or impacts general cognitive control processes remains controversial. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of cardiac phase on different facets of cognitive control. We built a nonemotional cognitive control task to delineate mechanisms such as processing speed, response selection, response inhibition, and conflict monitoring. We showed that the systole (after the blood is ejected from the heart), compared to the diastole, was related to faster responses. Moreover, the cardiac phase dynamics also impacted response inhibition, with an increased probability of failure toward the middle of the course of systole. Although the reported effects were small in terms of magnitude, they highlight the influence of bodily states on abstract cognitive processes.

The Cardiac Timing Toolbox (CaTT): Testing for physiologically plausible effects of cardiac timing on behaviour

“…One involves a priori time-locking stimulus presentation to systole (set according to the R wave peak) or diastole (set as R + δ, where δ is set by the researcher) and comparing behaviour, such as fear intensity ratings and other emotional categories (14,15), pain responses (13,(16)(17)(18)(19), memory performance (20,21), and motor responses (22)(23)(24), across the two timing conditions. Relative to diastole, pain and somatosensory perception are attenuated at systole (12,13,19,25).…”

The relationship between interoception and agency and its modulation by heartbeats: an exploratory study

“…Cardiac timing effects (systolic vs diastolic phase of the cardiac cycle) have been shown to modulate a number of cognitive, emotional and perceptual processes: In studies of action control, motor response inhibition in a stop-signal task is observed to greater during systole compared to diastole, suggesting that heartbeat-triggered interoceptive signals aid action inhibition 20 . Other groups also report faster responses and better response inhibition in similar non-emotional tasks during the systolic period compared to the diastolic period 29 . Herman and Tsakiris study demonstrated the intentional binding effect was greater when actions were done during systole than diastole 19 www.nature.com/scientificreports/ interoceptive accuracy was found in the present study, possibly due to differences in participant characteristics and experimental settings.…”

Be still my heart: Cardiac regulation as a mode of uncertainty reduction

“…Contemporary psychophysiological studies of cardiosensory integration typically involve sample sizes on the order of 30-40 participants (e.g., Al et al, 2020;Azevedo et al, 2018;Galvez-Pol et al, 2020;Hodossy & Tsakiris, 2020;Makowski et al, 2020;Motyka et al, 2019). Accordingly, 39 adults (26 female) aged 18-46 years (M = 22.46 years, S.D.…”