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Nonlinear and Fractal Analysis

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Heart Rate Variability Analysis with the R package RHRV

Part of the book series: Use R! ((USE R))

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Abstract

There are many complex systems in nature that can be explained by nonlinear interactions of its main components. The heart rate regulation is one of the most complex systems in the human body. Heart rhythm is innervated by both the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches of the ANS. At the same time, the autonomic nervous system is influenced by humoral effects, hemodynamic variables, respiratory rhythm, and stroke volume, among others. Furthermore, there exist feedback loops among these mechanisms influencing each other in a nonlinear way. A consequence of these nonlinear interactions is that heart rate modulation cannot be fully understood by studying its components in isolation. However, the study of the heart rhythm modulation as a whole is a formidable task. A more common approach in the literature, more modest than the full comprehension of the heart rate regulation system, is trying to quantify the complexity of heart rate using nonlinear statistics derived from the chaos theory or from fractal processes. In this chapter, we summarize the most widely used statistics based on nonlinear and fractal dynamics, and we show how to compute them with RHRV.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Constantino Antonio García Martínez & Jesús María Rodríguez Presedo

  2. CEU San Pablo University, Madrid, Spain

    Abraham Otero Quintana

  3. University of Vigo, Ourense, Spain

    Xosé A. Vila, María José Lado Touriño, Leandro Rodríguez-Liñares & Arturo José Méndez Penín

Authors
  1. Constantino Antonio García Martínez
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  2. Abraham Otero Quintana
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  3. Xosé A. Vila
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  4. María José Lado Touriño
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  5. Leandro Rodríguez-Liñares
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  6. Jesús María Rodríguez Presedo
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  7. Arturo José Méndez Penín
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Abraham Otero Quintana .

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García Martínez, C.A. et al. (2017). Nonlinear and Fractal Analysis. In: Heart Rate Variability Analysis with the R package RHRV. Use R!. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65355-6_5

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