System analysis of heart rate control in man.

The dynamic property of the heart rate response to exercise was determined and expressed in the frequency domain to establish a method of examining cardiovascular control function. The response of heart rate to a stimulus was measured at 5-s intervals in nine healthy young volunteers. The stimulus consisted of several runs of two-step exercise practiced in semirandom sequence for 19 min. The weight function of the system was estimated from autocorrelation function of the input signal and cross-correlation function between the input and output signals. The weight function was transformed into a transfer function and its Bode plot diagram was drawn. From the diagram, four dynamic parameters were determined. These parameters are as follows: K is a constant showing the theoretical steady-state increment of heart rate, and T1, T2, T3 are time constants. The values obtained in the present experiment with the healthy young males were: K 46.0 +/- 14.6 beats, T1, 2.12 +/- 0.44, T2, 1.12 +/- 0.16, and T3 0.70 +/- 0.07 min.