Time and Frequency Domain Measures of Heart Rate Variability in Schizophrenia

摘要

It has been reported that schizophrenia patients have altered cardiac autonomic regulation and changed heart rate variability. The goal of this study was to analyze whether schizophrenia patients may exhibit distinctive Heart rate variability time and frequency domain parameters for control subjects compared both at rest and during auditory stimulation periods. Photoplethysmographic signals of thirteen schizophrenic patients and thirteen healthy subjects were used in the analysis of heart rate variability. Results show that heart rate in patients was higher than that of control subjects indicating autonomic dysfunction throughout the entire experiment. In comparison with control subjects, patients with schizophrenia exhibited lower high frequency power and a greater low-frequency to high-frequency ratio. Moreover, while alerting stimulus decreased parasympathetic activity in healthy subjects, no significant changes in heart rate and frequency-domain HRV parameters were observed between the auditory stimulation and rest periods in schizophrenia patients.