Maternal-fetal heartbeat phase synchronization

摘要

Integrated physiological systems under neural control, such as the cardiac and respiratory systems, exhibit complex dynamics with continuous noisy fluctuations even in resting "equilibrium" conditions without external perturbations (1, 2). Advances in analytic methods have made it possible to identify a surprisingly robust temporal organization embedded in physiologic fluctuations, characterized by scale-invariant (fractal), multifractal, and nonlinear features over a range of time scales (2-4). This behavior is remarkably different from the one postulated by the classical principle of homeostasis (5), and it resembles the dynamics of certain physical systems away from equilibrium (6).