Mental arithmetic significantly increased heart rate from 72.35 to 80.38 beats/min, systolic blood pressure, and cardiac output, demonstrating time-dependent autonomic nervous system and cardiovascular responses.
Observational (n=34)
No
Does mental arithmetic task alter cardiovascular and autonomic responses in healthy male subjects?
Mental stress induces time-dependent cardiovascular responses characterized by initial parasympathetic withdrawal followed by sympathetic activation, regulated by prefrontal and temporal cortices.
Absolute Event Rate: 80.38% vs 72.35%
p-value: p=<0.01
BACKGROUND: Mental arithmetic has been verified inducing cerebral and cardiovascular responses. However, the mechanism and sequential responses are still ambiguous. This study aims to reveal the mechanism of cardiovascular and autonomic responses and the related scalp positions that regulate the autonomic nerves system (ANS) during MA task. METHODS: 34 healthy male subjects aged between 19 and 27 years old (mean age 23.6 ± 2.3 years) were recruited in. Electrocardiogram, impedance cardiography, beat-to-beat blood pressure and electroencephalography were measured simultaneously and continuously during the experiments. And the analysis of time-frequency, approximate entropy and Pearson correlation coefficient were adopted. For statistical comparison, paired t test is utilized in the study. RESULTS: The results showed that mental arithmetic task increased heart rate (from 72.35 ± 1.88 to 80.38 ± 2.34), blood pressure (systolic blood pressure: from 112.09 ± 3.23 to 126.79 ± 3.44; diastolic blood pressure: from 74.15 ± 1.93 to 81.20 ± 1.97), and cardiac output (from 8.71 ± 0.30 to 9.68 ± 0.35), and the mental arithmetic induced physiological responses could be divided into two stages, the first stage (10-110 s) and late stage (150-250 s). The high frequency power component (HF) of HRV decreased during MA, but the normalized low frequency power component (nLF) and LF/HF ratio of HRV increased only at the late stage. Moreover, during first stage, the correlations between approximate entropy of electroencephalography at Fp2, Fz, F4, F7 and the corresponding time-frequency results of HF were significant. During the late stage, the correlations between approximate entropy of electroencephalography at Fp2, Fz, C3, C4 and the corresponding nLF was significant. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrated that (1) mental stress induces time-dependent ANS activity and cardiovascular response. (2) Parasympathetic activity is lower during mental arithmetic task, but sympathetic nerve is activated only during late stage of mental arithmetic task. (3) Brain influences the cardiac activity through prefrontal and temporal cortex with the activation of ANS during mental arithmetic.
Wang et al. (Thu,) conducted a observational in Healthy (n=34). Mental arithmetic task vs. Baseline rest was evaluated on Heart rate (beats/min) (p=<0.01). Mental arithmetic significantly increased heart rate from 72.35 to 80.38 beats/min, systolic blood pressure, and cardiac output, demonstrating time-dependent autonomic nervous system and cardiovascular responses.