Measuring psychosocial stress with heart rate variability-based methods in different health and age groups
Abstract Objective. Autonomic nervous system function and thereby bodily stress and recovery reactions may be assessed by wearable devices measuring heart rate (HR) and its variability (HRV). So far, the validity of HRV-based stress assessments has been mainly studied in healthy populations. In this study, we determined how psychosocial stress affects physiological and psychological stress responses in both young (18–30 years) and middle-aged (45–64 years) healthy individuals as well as in patients with arterial hypertension and/or either prior evidence of prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. We also studied how an HRV-based stress index (Relax-Stress Intensity, RSI) relates to perceived stress …
Which direction should I go? A quest for understanding the effect of TMS stimulus orientation on evoked responses
The orientation of the electric field (E-field) induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) plays a significant role in determining the magnitude of motor evoked potentials (MEP) and TMS-evoked potentials (TEP). However, fundamental mechanisms explaining the interaction of the induced E-field and the underlying neuronal populations are still largely unknown. We recently entered a quest to understand and describe neurophysiological and physical factors affecting the effect of the E-field orientation on the MEP and TEP. We developed a dual-coil TMS transducer capable of fast and accurate electronic control of the induced E-field orientation. With this transducer, we could scan the effe…