Figure 10

Example of a 7:2 phase locking pattern. A periodic and dominant frequency modulation of the heartbeat causes a predominance and cyclical recurrence of typical binary patterns of heart rate acceleration (1) and deceleration (0), as sketched here for a 7:2 phase-locked sinus modulator. The figure shows how a sinusoidal frequency modulation leads to a displacement of equidistant R peaks. The direction is indicated by arrows on top of the R peak bars. During inspiration (increase of idealized thermistor curve) R peaks are advanced and during expiration R peaks are retarded. The binary values below indicate the corresponding lengthening (0) or shortening (1) of RR intervals from one beat to the next. The two alternatively resulting patterns (0110011 and 0110010) belong to the same pattern class (the 7:2 phase locking pattern class which is designated as class 22 in [19, 20]). In the range from 3:1 to 6:1 or 6:2 to 12:2, phase locking pattern predominance most likely originates from intermittent cardiorespiratory coordination as the binary constellations of these patterns correspond to high frequency heart rate variations, i.e. RSA. These classes are therefore denoted as RSA pattern classes without claiming a one-to-one correspondence to real cardiorespiratory synchronization. This relationship between RSA pattern predominance and cardiorespiratory synchronization is subject of the present study.