Long-Range Anticorrelations and Non-Gaussian Behavior of the Heartbeat

C.-K. Peng, J.

Physical Review Letters, vol 70, no. 9, 1343-1346 (1 March 1993)

Abstract

We find that the successive increments in the cardiac beat-to-beat intervals of healthy subjects display scale-invariant, long-range anticorrelations (up to 104 heart beats). Furthermore, we find that the histogram for the heartbeat intervals increments is well described by a Levy stable distribution. For a group of subjects with severe heart disease, we find that the distribution is unchanged, but the long-range correlations vanish. Therefore, the difference scaling behavior in healthy and disease must relate to the underlying dynamics of the heartbeat.

1/f in biology section