Cardiac-respiratory-somatic relationships and feedback effects in a multiple session heart rate control experiment.

An experiment addressing several unresolved issues in operant in human subjects was performed. Cardiac-respiratory relationships. cardiac-somatic re!:atl~}nshipls. effects of biofeedback, and individual differences were examined in terms of their across multiple training sessions. Thirty subjects participated in 3 training sessions. Each session began with" trials HR change without feedback followed by 8 trials with "proportional" feedback of HR. 01'1 half the trials HR decrease was attempted while HR increase was attempted on the other half. Sulbjeds instructed to keep their respiration rate (RR) constant and not to engage in undue movement or muscle activity. Results indicated that subjects were able to produce significant HR increases and decreases from baseline levels, but these changes were accompanied by parallel changes in respiratory and somatic variables which persisted across sessions. Analysis of data from individual was ..... ·f"' ..... ",.! to explore the nature of Individual differences in cardlac-respiratory-somatic The el'ects of biofeedback were unimpressive, suggesting at best a minor improvement in cardiac control with increased respiratory concomitance. Cardiac control, feedback and cardiac-somatic patterns were stable over sessions. There was evidence of some reduction In If'lu'riiIU·.ifl!'<!nill'·llItl'I!"V parallelism across sessions. DESCRIPTORS: Operant conditioning, Heart rate, Respiration, Cardiac-somatic rel.aUon!ihil~. Biofeedback, Individual differences. In spite of difficulties which have surfaced with research on operant conditioning of cardiac re­ sponses in animals (Miller & Dworkin. 1974). re­ search of this nature with human subjects has con­ tinued. Human research, although unlikely to an­ swer definitively the question of whether a . 'pure " cardiac response can be operantly conditioned, has potential for answering a number of questions con­ cerning the relationship between autonomic and central processes. Although a large body of human research exists, many basic questions remain unan­ swered. In a recent review of operant conditioning of cardiac functions, McCanne and Sandman (1976) identified several areas in need of further research induding: the precise nature of the relationship of

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