Assessing the cardiac autonomic response to bicycle exercise in Olympic athletes with different loads of endurance training: new insights from statistical indicators based on multilevel exploratory factor analysis.

ABSTRACT: Aim: The mechanisms governing the organism's response to exercise are complex and difficult to study. Spectral analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) could represent a convenient methodology for studying humans' autonomic nervous system (ANS). However, difficulties in interpreting the multitude of correlated HRV-derived indices, mainly when computed over different time segments, may represent a barrier to its usage. This preliminary investigation addressed to elite athletes proposes a novel method describing the cardiac autonomic response to exercise based on multilevel exploratory factor analysis (MEFA), which reduces the multitude of HRV-derived indices to fewer uncorrelated ANS indicators capable of accounting for their interrelationships and overcoming the above difficulties.

SUBMITTER: Solaro N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10616979 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature