Key result
Brain-to-heart signaling dominates sleep arousals following a transient pre-arousal surge in heart-to-brain coupling.
Why the study?
The directional causal structure of brain-heart coupling during sleep arousals remains unexplored despite known concurrent cortical and autonomic responses.
Observational (n=53)
The study demonstrates that autonomic-cortical signaling (heart-to-brain coupling) increases significantly prior to sleep arousals, highlighting its role in sleep arousal dynamics.
May flag impending arousals in sleep monitoring; leaves open whether targeting heart-to-brain coupling alters clinical outcomes.
Sleep arousals are transient events known to elicit concurrent cortical and autonomic responses, yet the directional causal structure of brain-heart coupling during these events remains unexplored. In this study, we investigated nonlinear directed brain-heart interactions during sleep arousals using Convergent Cross Mapping (CCM).We extracted eventlocked 120 s segments from simultaneous single-channel EEG and ECG full-night recordings of 53 participants. We computed EEG amplitude envelopes for sleep-specific frequency bands and heart rate variability series. Bidirectional CCM using 30-s windows with a 1-s sliding step provided time-varying coupling estimates across all arousals. We validated coupling significance using phase-randomized surrogate data, and tested band-selective coupling changes using linear mixedeffects models. Results indicated that brain-to-heart coupling dominated in all bands and pre- and post-arousal. Heart-tobrain coupling increased significantly in all EEG bands prearousal and recovered in post-arousal, indicating autonomiccortical signaling as a hallmark of sleep arousal dynamics.
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Gumussu et al. (2026) conducted an observational in Sleep arousals (n=53). Sleep arousals was evaluated on Directional causal structure of brain-heart coupling. Brain-to-heart coupling dominated during sleep arousals, while heart-to-brain coupling increased significantly pre-arousal and recovered post-arousal.
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