Luís A. Nunes Amaral

Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics
Professor of Medicine (by courtesy)
Professor of Molecular Biosciences (by courtesy)
Professor of Physics & Astronomy (by courtesy)

Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics
2145 Sheridan Road (Room M426)
Evanston, IL 60208, US
Phone: +1 847-491-7850

Beyond 1/f: Multifractality in human heartbeat dynamics

Ivanov, PC, Amaral, LAN, Goldberger, AL, Havlin, S, Rosenblum, MG, Struzik, Z, Stanley, HE
AIP CONF PROC 511, 273-280 (2000)

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that physiological signals under healthy conditions may have a fractal temporal structure. We investigate the possibility that time series generated by certain physiological control systems may be members of a special class of complex processes, termed multifractal, which require a large number of exponents to characterize their scaling properties. We report on evidence for multifractality in a biological dynamical system - the healthy human heartbeat. Further, we show that the multifractal character and nonlinear properties of the healthy heart rate are encoded in the Fourier phases. We uncover a loss of multifractality for a life-threatening condition, congestive heart failure.