An open-source LabVIEW application toolkit for phasic heart rate analysis in psychophysiological research

The cardiovascular system has been extensively measured in a variety of research and clinical domains. Despite technological and methodological advances in cardiovascular science, the analysis and evaluation of phasic changes in heart rate persists as a way to assess numerous psychological concomitants. Some researchers, however, have pointed to constraints on data analysis when evaluating cardiac activity indexed by heart rate or heart period. Thus, an off-line application toolkit for heart rate analysis is presented. The program, written with National Instruments’ LabVIEW, incorporates a variety of tools for off-line extraction and analysis of heart rate data. Current methods and issues concerning heart rate analysis are highlighted, and how the toolkit provides a flexible environment to ameliorate common problems that typically lead to trial rejection is discussed. Source code for this program may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Web archive atwww.psychonomic.org/archive/.