Characterizing Functional Directional Brain-Heart Interplay in Subclinical Depression (Dysphoria): a Preliminary Study using EEG and HRV

Subclinical depression (dysphoria) is a common disorder that may lead to major depression. Despite its significant impact on the person's daily functioning, the diagnosis relies on subjective clinical scores and structured interviews only because associated neurophysiological correlates are unknown. Following recent studies linking cardiovascular activity to mood disorders, here we investigate functional directional brain-heart interplay in 5min resting state using 32-channel Electroencephalographic and Heart Rate Variability series. Time-varying power spectra were gathered from 16 females with dysphoria and 24 age- and gender-matched healthy controls and were considered as the inputs to our recently proposed computational model. Preliminary results suggest that from-brain-to-heart interplay significantly increases in subclinical depression with respect to a healthy condition.