Summary
The possible linear short-term coordination between respiratory movements (RESP), heart rate fluctuations (HRF), and arterial blood pressure fluctuations (BPF) in conscious human beings has not yet been investigated because of the restricted time resolution of conventional time series analysis. At present, this short-term dynamics as an expression of relative coordination can be quantified by newly developed adaptive autoregressive modeling of time series using Kalman filtering. Thus, in 6 conscious healthy volunteers, RESP, HRF, and BPF were recorded during 10 min in the supine position, at rest and during paced breathing. A considerable part of calculated ordinary and partial coherence sequences of short-term resolution between RESP and HRF, RESP and BPF, and partially between HRF and BPF showed patterns varying in time that could be correlated to changes between gradual coordinations (coherence changing between 0.40 and 0.95). They were more seldom complete or absent. There were mostly opposite changes between partial coherence sequences RESP-HRF/BPF and RESP-BPF/HRF demonstrating competitive behavior between these coordinations. Paced breathing did not essentially affect any observed characteristics. Therefore, these coherence dynamics are not essentially dependent on voluntary breathing movements. We conclude that to a different extent these linear and changing couplings between RESP, HRF, and BPF in conscious human beings exhibit properties of short-term complete and more frequently gradual coordinations showing dynamics that can not be determined by conventional methods.

Key words
Relative coordination · Coherence of short-term resolution · Partial coherence · Respiratory movements · Heart rate fluctuations · Arterial blood pressure fluctuations

Reprint requests
Prof. Dr. Dr. Ulrich Zwiener, Institut für Pathophysiologie, Klinikum der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Nonnenplan 2, D-07740 Jena, Germany, tel: 0049-3641-938950, fax: 0049-3641-938952, e-mail: uzwi@mti-n.uni-jena.de

ISSN 0862 - 8408