Investigating Dynamic Brain-Heart Interactions during sleep with Information-Theoretic Measures

Abstract

The ongoing exploration of brain-heart interactions in the literature, driven by its significant health implications, remains incomplete despite increasing recent efforts. This study delves into the regularity of electroencephalographic (EEG) oscillations and their synchronization with cardiac vagal longterm variability using Information Storage (IS) and Mutual Information Rate (MIR) measures estimated by linear autoregressive analysis on sleep-time series data. Results reveal significant regularity in slow EEG dynamics, alongside a stronger dynamical coupling with cardiac parasympathetic activity, specifically for high-frequency neural oscillations.