Abstract
In the area of psychosomatic medicine, there are quite a few patients who need to examine autonomic nervous functions. Recently, heart rate variability (HRV), blood pressure variability (BPV) and baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) are frequently used as accurate and non-invasive investigations of autonomic nervous function. HRV measures the physiological phenomenon of variation in the time interval between heartbeats mainly regulated by cardiac autonomic function. In contrast, BRV measures the complex phenomenon that includes blood pressure fluctuation with peripheral cardiac sympathetic function and mechanical function caused by respiration movement. BRS calculated by a crossspectral method is known to reflect the parasympathetic bradycardia effect. Thus, by investigating BPV and BRS together with HRV with frequency domain analysis, cardiovascular sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous functions are evaluated more quantitatively. In addition, autonomic nonlinear characteristics could be evaluated with fractal analysis, such as detrended fluctuation analysis. This paper showed the findings in the quantitative evaluation of cardiac autonomic function with priority given to the latest studies with anorexia nervosa patients.
