Five weeks of Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback Improves Emotion in Older Adults: An fMRI Study
Poster No:
751
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Huan Zhang1, Chunling Zhang1, Chaoliang Sun1, Yongfu Hao1, Zhang Yu1
Institutions:
1Zhejiang Lab, Hangzhou, Zhejiang
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback improves clinical symptoms relating to anxiety and depression[1]. However, how HRV regulates brain circuits underlying emotional processing is unknown. We used emotional regulation task and resting-state fMRI data to evaluate HRV-induced changes in brain activation and connectivity patterns. Our results suggest that HRV biofeedback up-regulates emotion pathways in the brain, including amygdala, prefrontal and parietal cortex, and down-regulates depression and anxiety scores in behaviours.
Methods:
The behaviour and fMRI data were downloaded from the HRV biofeedback project (https://openneuro.org/datasets/ds003823/versions/1.3.3). Among which, 23 old participants (6 male, age: 55-80 years) with complete Emotion Regulation Task (10 min) and Resting-state (7 min) fMRI data were included in this study. All subjects underwent a 5-week HRV biofeedback experiment [2]. Structural and functional MRI data were acquired using a 3T Siemens MAGNETOM Trio MRI scanner. Before and after HRV regulation, all subjects the completed the questionnaires for depression (Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D)) and anxiety (TAI).
We used fMRIPrep (https://fmriprep.org/en/stable/) for data pre-processing and nilearn (https://nilearn.github.io/stable/index.html) for analysis of brain activation and functional connectivity. Specifically, we used general linear model (GLM) to evaluate the changes in brain activation for the contrasts of "diminish>view", "intensify>view" and "intensify>diminish" during the emotion regulation task. We choose the left amygdala as the seed to calculate the whole-brain functional connectivity.
We used fMRIPrep (https://fmriprep.org/en/stable/) for data pre-processing and nilearn (https://nilearn.github.io/stable/index.html) for analysis of brain activation and functional connectivity. Specifically, we used general linear model (GLM) to evaluate the changes in brain activation for the contrasts of "diminish>view", "intensify>view" and "intensify>diminish" during the emotion regulation task. We choose the left amygdala as the seed to calculate the whole-brain functional connectivity.
Results:
Participants showed a significant decrease in depression (CES-D scale, T-score=-2.24, p=0.0356), and a trend of decreasing in anxiety scores (TAI: T-score=-1.54, p=0.135) after HRV biofeedback, and a significant effect of intensifying their emotions during the regulation task (T=2.26, p=0.029) (Figure 1a). In the emotion regulation task (Figure 1c), we found strong activation for right superior and middle temporal gyrus (STG, MTG), bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and putamen for the contrast of "diminish>view", left superior and middle frontal gyrus (SFG, MFG), IFG, STG and right parahippocampal gyrus (PHG) for the contrast of "intensify >view", and left MFG,SFG, inferior parietal lobe (IPL), putamen, precentral gyrus and thalamus for the contrast of "intensify > diminish". Moreover, we detected significant associations between the intensify-related IFG activity with CES-D score (r=-0.41, p=0.04), and between the diminish-related PHG activity with TAI (r=-0.049，p=0.016) after HRV biofeedback. Additionally, we observed a significant increase in the functional connectivity (Figure 2a) between left amygdala with the widespread emotion circuits including left IFG, MFG, supplementary motor area (SMA), anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC), IPL, STG, MTG and insula. Remarkably, the functional connectivity of left-amygdala was significantly associated with the CES-D scale in MFG (r=-0.48, p=0.019), IFG (r=-0.54, p=0.007), IPL (r=-0.43, p=0.041), and insula (r=-0.57, p=0.004) after HRV biofeedback.
Conclusions:
In this study, we investigated brain and behavioural changes due to a 5-week HRV biofeedback. Our results demonstrated a critical role of prefrontal cortex in up-regulating emotions, and PHG in down-regulating emotions. Both of which are associated with the decrease of depression and anxiety symptoms after HRV biofeedback. We also found an increase in prefrontal-amygdala connectivity and its association with decreased depression scores due to the HRV biofeedback. In summary, our study suggests a potential treatment of HRV biofeedback as emotion regulation and depression.
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Emotional Perception 1
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Activation (eg. BOLD task-fMRI) 2
Connectivity (eg. functional, effective, structural)
Keywords:
Anxiety
Emotions
Other - Heart rate variability biofeedback; emotion regulation; prefrontal cortex; amygdala
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
[2] Yoo, Hyun Joo, et al. "Multimodal neuroimaging data from a 5-week heart rate variability biofeedback randomized clinical trial." Scientific Data 10.1 (2023): 503.