Day-night patterns in heart rate variability and complexity: differences with age and cardiopulmonary disease.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Heart rate variability (HRV) measures provide valuable insights into physiology; however, gaps remain in understanding circadian patterns in heart rate dynamics. We aimed to explore day-night differences in heart rate dynamics in patients with chronic cardiopulmonary disease compared with healthy controls. METHODS: Using 24-hour heart rate data from patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and/or heart failure (n = 16) and healthy adult controls (older group: ≥50 years, n = 42; younger group: 20-49 years, n = 136), we compared day-night differences in conventional time and frequency domain HRV indices and a multiscale-entropy-based complexity index (CI1-20) of HRV among the 3 groups. RESULTS: Twenty-four-hour HRV showed significant day-night differences (marked with "△") among younger healthy (mean age: 34.5 years), older healthy (mean age: 61.6 years), and cardiopulmonary patients (mean age: 68.4 years), including change in percentage of adjacent intervals that differ > 50 ms (△pNN50), high frequency (△HF), normalized low frequency (△nLF), ratio (△LF/HF), and △CI1-20. Among these, △LF/HF (2.13 ± 2.35 vs 1.1 ± 2.47 vs -0.35 ± 1.25; P < .001) and △CI1-20 (0.15 ± 0.24 vs 0.02 ± 0.28 vs -0.21 ± 0.27; P < .001) were significant in each pairwise comparison following analysis of variance tests. Average CI1-20 was highest in younger healthy individuals and lowest in cardiopulmonary patients (1.37 ± 0.12 vs 1.01 ± 0.27; P < .001). Younger healthy patients showed a heart rate complexity dipping pattern (night < day), older healthy patients showed nondipping, and cardiopulmonary patients showed reverse dipping (night > day). CONCLUSIONS: As measures of 24-hour variability, traditional and complexity-based metrics of HRV exhibit large day-night differences in healthy individuals; these differences are blunted, or even reversed, in individuals with cardiopulmonary pathology. Measures of diurnal dynamics may be useful indices of reduced adaptive capacity in patients with cardiopulmonary conditions. CITATION: Ma Y, Chang M-C, Litrownik D, Wayne PM, Yeh GY. Day-night patterns in heart rate variability and complexity: differences with age and cardiopulmonary disease. J Clin Sleep Med. 2023;19(5):873-882.

Emergence of dynamical complexity related to human heart rate variability.

We apply the refined composite multiscale entropy (MSE) method to a one-dimensional directed small-world network composed of nodes whose states are binary and whose dynamics obey the majority rule. We find that the resulting fluctuating signal becomes dynamically complex. This dynamical complexity is caused (i) by the presence of both short-range connections and long-range shortcuts and (ii) by how well the system can adapt to the noisy environment. By tuning the adaptability of the environment and the long-range shortcuts we can increase or decrease the dynamical complexity, thereby modeling trends found in the MSE of a healthy human heart rate in different physiological states. When the shortcut and adaptability values increase, the complexity in the system dynamics becomes uncorrelated.

Lagrangian-Eulerian dynamics of breaking shallow water waves through tracer tracking of fluid elements.

We experimentally investigate the Lagrangian-Eulerian dynamics of fluid motion and wave-form evolution for a breaking shallow water wave approaching a slope by tracking tracer motions. It is found that, before breaking, the surface element can climb over the crest and exhibits cyclic oscillation with small forward drift. The increasing asymmetric tangential compression (accumulation) and rarefaction (depletion) in the crest front and the crest are the keys for the crest front steepening with the increasing particle cyclic excursion and forward Stoke drift. Eventually, the surface layer cannot climb over the crest with the vertical front. It curls up and forms an overhanging plunging jet leading the crest, while the lower flow still can reach the crest rear. This process leads to wave breaking with the rapid drop of crest height and the transition from slow divergence to rapid divergence of the adjacent fluid trajectories.

Observation of multifractal intermittent dust-acoustic-wave turbulence.

Intermittent dust acoustic wave turbulence self-excited by downward ion flow in dissipative dusty plasma is experimentally observed and investigated. The power spectra of the temporal dust density fluctuation show distinct bumps in the low-frequency regime and power-law scaling in the high-frequency regime. The structure-function analysis demonstrates the multifractal dynamics of the wave turbulence. Decreasing dissipation by decreasing neutral pressure leads to a more turbulent state with a less distinct low-frequency bump in the power spectrum, more stretched non-Gaussian tails in the histogram of the wave-height increment at a small time interval τ, and a higher degree of multifractality. The loss of long time memory with increasing τ for a more turbulent state causes a change from the distribution with stretched non-Gaussian tails to Gaussian with increasing τ.

Micro-origin of no-trough trapping in self-excited nonlinear dust acoustic waves.

We experimentally investigate the micro-origin of the absence of trough trapping in nonlinear traveling dust acoustic waves self-excited by the downward ion flow in the dissipative dusty plasma. The wave forms of dust density, the drag force from the background neutrals, ions, and dusts, and the effective potential energy for dusts are constructed by tracking dust motion and measuring the velocity and the position-dependent forces. The tilted washboard type potential wave form with a slight phase lead to the dust density wave form is obtained. It provides sufficient kinetic energy to compensate drag dissipation and move dusts from the dust density trough to the crest front. The dusts with sufficient energy overcome the downward pushing by the crest front, climb over the crest, and sustain the oscillatory motion with upward drift. Those dusts with insufficient energy to climb over the potential barrier of the crest are trapped in and move downward with the crest front, until kicked upward by fluctuation. The upward neutral dominated drag force prevents them from sliding down the potential energy hill at the crest front and further oscillating in the trough. It leads to the absence of trough trapping.

Wave-particle dynamics of wave breaking in the self-excited dust acoustic wave.

The wave-particle microdynamics in the breaking of the self-excited dust acoustic wave growing in a dusty plasma liquid is investigated through directly tracking dust micromotion. It is found that the nonlinear wave growth and steepening stop as the mean oscillating amplitude of dust displacement reaches about 1/k (k is the wave number), where the vertical neighboring dust trajectories start to crossover and the resonant wave heating with uncertain crest trapping onsets. The dephased dust oscillations cause the abrupt dropping and broadening of the wave crest after breaking, accompanied by the transition from the liquid phase with coherent dust oscillation to the gas phase with chaotic dust oscillation. Corkscrew-shaped phase-space distributions measured at the fixed phases of the wave oscillation cycle clearly indicate how dusts move in and constitute the evolving waveform through dust-wave interaction.