corner
corner
APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 85 » Issue 17
< Previous Article | Next Article >

Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 3736–3739 (2000)

Correlated and Uncorrelated Regions in Heart-Rate Fluctuations during Sleep

Download: PDF (240 kB) Buy this article Export: BibTeX or EndNote (RIS)

Armin Bunde1, Shlomo Havlin1,2, Jan W. Kantelhardt1, Thomas Penzel3, Jörg-Hermann Peter3, and Karlheinz Voigt3
1Institut für Theoretische Physik III, Justus-Liebig-Universität, D-35392 Giessen, Germany
2Department of Physics and Gonda-Goldschmied-Center for Medical Diagnosis, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel
3Zentrum für Innere Medizin und Institut für Physiologie, Philipps-Universität, D-35033 Marburg, Germany

Received 18 November 1999; published in the issue dated 23 October 2000

Healthy sleep consists of several stages: deep sleep, light sleep, and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Here we show that these sleep stages can be characterized and distinguished by correlations of heart rates separated by n beats. Using the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) up to fourth order we find that long-range correlations reminiscent to the wake phase are present only in the REM phase. In the non-REM phases, the heart rates are uncorrelated above the typical breathing cycle time, pointing to a random regulation of the heartbeat during non-REM sleep.

© 2000 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.3736
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.3736
PACS:
87.19.Hh, 05.45.Tp, 05.40.-a
 
< Previous Article | Next Article >