Heartbeat-evoked cortical responses: Underlying mechanisms, functional roles, and methodological considerations
Open accessAbstract
The heart continuously and cyclically communicates with the brain. Beyond homeostatic regulation and sensing, recent neuroscience research has started to shed light on brain-heart interactions in diverse cognitive and emotional processes. In particular, neural responses to heartbeats, as measured with the so-called heartbeat-evoked potential, have been shown to be useful for investigating cortical activity processing cardiac signals. In this review, we first overview and discuss the basic properties of the HEP such as underlying physiological pathways, brain regions, and neural mechanisms. We then provide a systematic review of the mental processes associated with cortical HEP activations, notably heartbeat perception, emotional feelings, perceptual awareness, and self-consciousness, in healthy subjects and clinical populations. Finally, we discuss methodological issues regarding the experimental design and data analysis for separating genuine HEP components from physiological artifacts (e.g., cardiac field artifact, pulse artifact) or other neural activities that are not specifically associated with the heartbeat. Findings from this review suggest that when intrinsic limitations (e.g., artifacts) are carefully controlled, the HEP could provide a reliable neural measure for investigating brain-viscera interactions in diverse mental processes.
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Cardiac parameters themselves such as heart rate or stroke volume seem to have only a limited influence on HERs' variability.
“So far, cardiac parameters themselves such as heart rate or stroke volume seem to have only a limited influence on HERs' variability 79-81 .”
From Interoceptive rhythms in the brain (2023) · cites this paper as [79]
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- Authors
- Park, H.-D., & Blanke, O.
- Affiliations
- École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (CH)
- University of Geneva (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Park, Hyeong-Dong
- Venue
- NeuroImage
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2019-08
- Volume
- 197
- Pages
- 502-511
- ISSN
- 1053-8119 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2943182254
- Cited by
- 285
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 60 · 2025: 63 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 39 · 2022: 35 · 2021: 29 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 3 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 13.54
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- infoscience.epfl.ch
- Licence
- Locations
- NeuroImage (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Infoscience (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (320030_182497)
- Fondation Bertarelli
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine › Heart Rate Variability and Autonomic Control
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Tactile and Sensory Interactions
- Keywords
- heartbeat-evoked potentials, heart-brain interaction, cardiac signals, heartbeat perception, feelings, perceptual awareness, self-consciousness
- MeSH terms
- Brain, Heart, Humans
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