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Brain and Heart Communicating?!
Your heart doesn't just pump blood—it constantly sends signals to your brain. But here's the surprising part: when your heart beats might actually change how your brain processes information and learns.
The Cardiac Cycle: Your Heart's Rhythm
Every heartbeat has two phases: systole (when your heart contracts and pumps blood) and diastole (when it relaxes and refills). This cycle repeats about 60-100 times per minute.
The two phases of your heartbeat: Systole (~300ms) and Diastole (~400ms)
See It in Action
Animation showing how the cardiac cycle unfolds in real-time
Video credit: Original source
The Discovery: Heart Timing Affects the Brain
Recent research published in Nature Communications revealed something remarkable: the brain processes rewards differently depending on whether they arrive during systole or diastole.
Systole and diastole create different brain states, affecting how we learn from rewards
Why Does This Matter?
When your heart contracts (systole), your body is in a higher arousal state. When it relaxes (diastole), arousal drops. These subtle changes in your body's state influence how your brain interprets events happening around you—including whether you learn from them.
My Implementation: Real-Time Heart-Triggered Learning
I built a system that detects heartbeats in real-time and presents feedback at precise moments in the cardiac cycle. This lets us explore not just systole vs diastole, but timing variations within these phases.
The closed-loop system: Record heart → Detect R-peak → Trigger feedback at precise cardiac phase
🔍 What We're Exploring
Does it matter if feedback comes early vs late within diastole? The original paper compared systole vs diastole broadly—we're looking at fine-grained timing within these phases.
⚙️ How It Works
Real-time ECG monitoring detects R-peaks (the heartbeat spike), calculates cardiac phase, and triggers visual feedback at precise moments—all within milliseconds.
📊 Early Findings
We're finding that timing within diastole does produce different brain responses, suggesting even finer cardiac-brain coordination than previously thought.
The Big Picture
This research reveals that the brain doesn't process information in isolation—it's constantly influenced by the rhythmic signals from your heart. Understanding this could lead to:
Better Learning Systems
Educational tools that present information at optimal cardiac moments for better retention
Therapeutic Applications
Treatments for anxiety and emotional regulation that work with the body's natural rhythms
Advanced BCIs
Brain-computer interfaces that adapt to physiological states for more natural interaction
Want to Learn More?
Research by Fouragnan et al. (2024) · Implementation by Hamed Ghane