Measures of Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Autonomic Outflow from Heartbeat Dynamics

Reliable and effective non-invasive measures of sympathetic and parasympathetic peripheral outflow are of crucial importance in cardiovascular physiology. Although many techniques have been proposed to take up this long-lasting challenge, none has proposed a satisfying discrimination of the dynamics of the two separate branches. Spectral analysis of heart rate variability is the most currently used technique for such assessment. Despite its widespread use, it has been demonstrated that the subdivision in the low frequency (LF) and high frequency (HF) bands does not fully reflect separate influences of the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches, respectively, mainly due to their simultaneous action in the LF. Two novel heartbeat-derived autonomic measures, the Sympathetic Activity Index (SAI) and Parasympathetic Activity Index (PAI), are proposed to separately assess the time-varying autonomic nervous system (ANS) synergic functions. Their efficacy is validated in landmark autonomic manoeuvres generally employed in clinical settings. The novel measures move beyond the classical frequency domain paradigm through identification of a set of coefficients associated with a proper combination of Laguerre base functions. The resulting measures were compared to the traditional LF and HF power. A total of 236 ECG recordings were analyzed for validation, including autonomic outflow changes elicited by procedures of different nature and temporal variation, such as postural changes, lower body negative pressure, and handgrip tests. The proposed SAI-PAI measures consistently outperform traditional frequency-domain indices in tracking expected instantaneous autonomic variations, both vagal and sympathetic, and may aid clinical decision making showing reduced inter-subject variability and physiologically-plausible dynamics.