Cardiac defense response, cognitive flexibility and adaptative emotion regulation strategies

Abstract

Cardiac Defense Response (CDR) is a dynamic pattern of cardiac reactivity in response to aversive, intense and unexpected stimuli consisting of two successive accelerating/decelerating components, whose psychological significance is attributed to both attentional and motivational/emotional processes. According to the defense cascade model, the CDR second accelerative component indicates the activation of the aversivedefensive motivational system. This research aimed to analyze the relationship between CDR, levels of anxiety/depression, emotional regulation, and cognitive flexibility in a sample of healthy participants (N = 120). The experimental task consisted in the presentation of an intense aversive sound (500 ms, 105 dB) after an 8-minute rest period to prompt the CDR. A battery of questionnaires (HADS, CERQ, and CFI) was administered before the task began. Preliminary analyses did show no differences in the CDR pattern between subjects scoring high vs. low in anxiety and depression. We divided the sample into accelerators and decelerators according to their change scores obtained in the CDR second accelerative component. Significant differences were found in specific emotion regulation strategies and cognitive flexibility, with accelerators scoring significantly less in both self-report measures. Our findings suggest that cognitive flexibility and adaptive emotional regulation strategies might have an impact on cardiac defense response. It is possible that difficulties in regulating ongoing emotions might be associated with low cognitive flexibility, being key in the association of CDR and disease previously reported in the literature.