An 8-week heart rate variability biofeedback intervention significantly increased heart rate variability (SDNN) by 8.6 ms and decreased resting heart rate by 5.2 beats/min, accompanied by increased functional connectivity of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
RCT (n=32)
Open-label
Paired and randomly assigned
No
Does an 8-week HRV biofeedback intervention improve heart rate variability and alter resting state functional brain connectivity in healthy subjects?
An 8-week HRV biofeedback intervention successfully increases parasympathetic tone and enhances functional connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and limbic regions involved in autonomic regulation.
Absolute Event Rate: 8.6% vs -5.9%
p-value: p=<0.05
BACKGROUND: Heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback has a beneficial impact on perceived stress and emotion regulation. However, its impact on brain function is still unclear. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effect of an 8-week HRV-biofeedback intervention on functional brain connectivity in healthy subjects. METHODS: instead of the training. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was conducted before and after the intervention in both groups. To compute resting state functional connectivity (RSFC), we defined regions of interest in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and a total of 260 independent anatomical regions for network-based analysis. Changes of RSFC of the VMPFC to other brain regions were compared between groups. Temporal changes of HRV during the resting state recording were correlated to dynamic functional connectivity of the VMPFC. RESULTS: First, we corroborated the role of the VMPFC in cardiac autonomic regulation. We found that temporal changes of HRV were correlated to dynamic changes of prefrontal connectivity, especially to the middle cingulate cortex, the left insula, supplementary motor area, dorsal and ventral lateral prefrontal regions. The biofeedback group showed a drop in heart rate by 5.2 beats/min and an increased SDNN as a measure of HRV by 8.6 ms (18%) after the intervention. Functional connectivity of the VMPFC increased mainly to the insula, the amygdala, the middle cingulate cortex, and lateral prefrontal regions after biofeedback intervention when compared to changes in the control group. Network-based statistic showed that biofeedback had an influence on a broad functional network of brain regions. CONCLUSION: Our results show that increased heart rate variability induced by HRV-biofeedback is accompanied by changes in functional brain connectivity during resting state.
Schumann et al. (Tue,) conducted a rct in Healthy subjects (n=32). Heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback vs. Jump'n'run mobile games was evaluated on Change in global heart rate variability (SDNN) in ms (p=<0.05). An 8-week heart rate variability biofeedback intervention significantly increased heart rate variability (SDNN) by 8.6 ms and decreased resting heart rate by 5.2 beats/min, accompanied by increased functional connectivity of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.