An analysis of the autonomic cardiac activity by reducing the interplay between sympathetic and parasympathetic information

Abstract

Herein, we make a theoretical effort to characterize the interplay of the main stimuli underlying the cardiac control. Based on the analysis of heartbeat intervals and using neural coding strategies, we investigate the hypothesis that information theoretic principles could be used to give insights to the strategy evolved to control the heart. This encodes the sympathetic and parasympathetic stimuli. As a result of analysis, we illustrate and emphasize the basic sources that might be attributed to control the heart rate based on the interplay of the autonomic tones. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.