Can heart rate variability monitoring estimate sleepiness-related decrements in psychomotor vigilance during total sleep deprivation?
HRV monitoring shows potential as a physiological marker to predict attentional failure and could be incorporated into safety devices to warn drowsy operators.
The ECG carries information about a person's vigilance state. Hence, HRV measures could potentially be used to predict when an individual is at increased risk of attentional failure. Our results suggest that HRV monitoring, either alone or in combination with other physiologic measures, could be incorporated into safety devices to warn drowsy operators when their performance is impaired.
Chua et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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