Brain–Heart Interaction and the Experience of Flow While Playing a Video Game

FIGURE 1. The flow-channel model (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975).

FIGURE 2. (A) Topographical map of the scalp sensors where the distinct heart-evoked potential (HEP) between the game and the pre-/post-game conditions was observed. The red-colored region including FC1, FC2, Fz, and Cz sensors indicates the location of the electrodes contributing to this significant difference, (B) the grand average HEP across fronto-central sensors for the three conditions. The shaded area shows the time window in which we observed a significant difference. (C) Mean amplitude and the standard deviation of the HEP over the 400–500 ms time window in which the significant difference was observed for the three conditions, (D) Flow-absorption score as a function of the HEP amplitude.

FIGURE 3. (A) Neural sources of the differential HEP for the pre-game and the game conditions. Different activation patterns were identified in the left primary somatosensory and the left supplementary and primary motor cortices extended to the left posterior cingulate cortex (t pertains to permutation test results considering α < 0.01 with FDR correction) stemming from higher activation during the pre-game condition, (B) Reconstructed time course of the HEP in the left primary somatosensory cortex grand averaged across all subjects in absolute values of dipole currents for the pre-game and the game conditions. The shaded area shows the time window in which significantly more activation was observed during the pre-game condition.

FIGURE 4. Neural sources of the differential HEP observed for the pre-game and the game conditions for the gamers (left) and the non-games (right). (t pertains to permutation test results considering α < 0.05 with the FDR correction).

FIGURE 5. (A) The average IBI and its standard deviation during the pre-game, 5-min intervals while playing the game (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and the post-game conditions, (B) association between the difference in the IBI during the last and the first 5 min of gameplay and the FSS mean score, (C) association between the difference in the IBI during the last and the first 5 min of the gameplay and the FSS-absorption score.