Chronographic Imprint of Age-Induced Alterations in Heart Rate Dynamical Organization

Beat-to-beat changes in the heart period are transformed into a network of increments between subsequent RR-intervals, which enables graphical descriptions of short-term heart period variability. Three types of such descriptions are considered: (1) network graphs arising from a set of vertices and directed edges, (2) contour plots of adjacency matrices A, representing the networks and transition matrices T, resulting from A, and (3) vector plots of gradients of the matrices A and T. Two indices are considered which summarize properties of A and T: the approximate deceleration capacity and the entropy rate. The method, applied to time series of nocturnal RR-intervals recorded from healthy subjects of different ages, reveals important aspect of changes in the autonomic activity caused by biological aging. Independent of the subject’s age, following accelerations, a pendulum-like dynamics appears. With decelerations, this dynamics develops in line with the subject’s age. This aging transition can be graphically visualized by vectors connecting the maxima of the transition probabilities of T, which, metaphorically, resemble a chronometer or the hands of a clock.