Effect of heartbeat perception on heartbeat evoked potential waves

Objective Early researches found that different heartbeat perceivers have different heartbeat evoked potential (HEP) waves. Two tasks were considered in our experiments to get more details about the differences between good and poor heartbeat perceivers at attention and resting state.Methods Thirty channels of electroencephalogram (EEG) were recorded in 22 subjects, who had been subdivided into good and poor heartbeat perceivers by mental tracking task. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to remove cardiac field artifact (CFA) from the HEP.Results (1) The good heart-beat perceivers showed difference between attention and resting state in the windows from 250 ms to 450 ms after R wave at C3 location and from 100 ms to 300 ms after R wave at C4 location; (2) The difference waveforms between good and poor heartbeat perceivers was a positive waveform at FZ from 220 ms to 340 ms after R wave, which was more significant in attention state.Conclusion Attention state had more effect on the HEPs of good heartbeat perceivers than that of poor heartbeat perceivers; and perception ability influenced HEPs more strongly in the attention state than in the resting state.