Cardiac timing effects on response speed are modulated by blood pressure but not heart rate variability in healthy young adults

2025/09/29 by Xiao Yang, C. Roldán, Michael Gazzanigo +2 · 1 voice
Medicine · #Cardiovascular Syncope and Autonomic Disorders #Heart Rate Variability and Autonomic Control #Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments

paper · doi:10.14814/phy2.70590

openalex publication_date 2025/09/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02

Abstract

Cardiac timing effects reflect the dynamic interplay between interoceptive and exteroceptive processes. Human information processing tends to be facilitated during cardiac diastole and inhibited during systole, reflecting autonomic regulation and the neuromodulation by baroreceptor afferents. Thus, blood pressure (BP) and vagally-mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) are potential modulators of those effects. Additionally, cognitive control appears to play a critical role in the processes. However, whether cardiac timing effects are influenced by those factors remains unclear. The present study aimed to clarify these relationships. Fifty-one healthy young adults completed three experimental sessions to assess BP, short-term HRV, and cardiac timing effects. The Multi-Source Interference Task served as the cognitive task, with stimuli presented during either systole (R + 300 ms) or diastole (R + 550 ms). Repeated-measures ANCOVA and regression analyses were conducted to examine the effects of cardiac timing on response time (RT) and their associations with BP and vmHRV. Results indicated that higher BP predicted less RT slowing by systole in interference trials, while vmHRV was not linked to cardiac timing effects in interference or control trials. These findings suggest that individual differences in physiological functioning influence cardiac timing effects and contribute to better understandings of how interoceptive processes shape human cognition.

Citations

• Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task
• Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions.
• What the heart forgets: Cardiac timing influences memory for words and is modulated by metacognition and interoceptive sensitivity
• The Difference Between “Significant” and “Not Significant” is not Itself Statistically Significant
• Sex differences in healthy human heart rate variability: A meta-analysis
• Knowing by heart: Visceral feedback shapes recognition memory judgments.
• Active information sampling varies across the cardiac cycle
• Cardiac timing and threatening stimuli influence response inhibition and ex‐Gaussian parameters of reaction time in a Go/No‐go task
• Publication guidelines for human heart rate and heart rate variability studies in psychophysiology—Part 1: Physiological underpinnings and foundations of measurement
• Phase confusion: How inconsistent cardiac labeling obscures interoception research
• Cardiac cycle affects risky decision-making
• A model of neurovisceral integration in emotion regulation and dysregulation

Discussions

• #New data that cardiac timing effects on human information processing response speeds are modulated by #bloodpressure but not by #heartrate variability in healthy young adults. doi.org/10.14814/phy... [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]