ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Autonomic Neuroscience
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1594759
Dynamic brain-heart-gut coupling during sleep: a continuous physiological signal analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Medical Innovation Research Division, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China
- 2School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
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Background: Investigating brain-heart-gut coupling during sleep is crucial for understanding the coordinated regulatory mechanisms of multiple systems during sleep. Non-invasive continuous physiological signal acquisition techniques have been widely applied in brain-heart dynamic assessment. However, current research on gut function primarily focuses on gut microbiota, with a lack of systematic investigation into the macroscopic dynamic changes of gut function. This study, therefore, based on multiple non-invasive physiological signals, aims to explore the dynamic changes and underlying mechanisms of brain-heart-gut coupling during sleep.The study enrolled 24 healthy subjects, and collected electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocardiogram (ECG), and bowel sounds (BS) signals during sleep. Through signal processing and spectral analysis, power spectral values of each physiological signal in different frequency bands were extracted. The maximal information coefficient (MIC) method was employed to dynamically monitor and quantitatively analyze the coupling strength of brain-heart-gut during sleep.The study revealed that the strength of brain-heart-gut coupling significantly varied with sleep stages, showing a gradual weakening trend as sleep deepened. In terms of heart-gut coupling (HGC), the coupling strength between the very low frequency (VLF) band of heart rate variability (HRV) and all BS-derived power sequences was significantly lower than other HRV frequency bands. Regarding brain-heart coupling (BHC), the EEG-beta band showed distinct sleep-stage-dependent coupling characteristics with HRV frequency bands, while the EEG-delta band exhibited higher coupling strength with HRV bands during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Additionally, the coupling strength of HGC was significantly higher than that of BGC. This study successfully achieved quantitative assessment of brain-heart-gut coupling during sleep based on continuous physiological signals, revealing specific patterns of coupling strength changes across different sleep stages. This research provides new methodological support for the diagnosis of sleep disorders and functional bowel diseases, holding significant theoretical value and clinical application prospects.
Keywords: Brain-heart-gut coupling, Sleep, Maximal information coefficient, continuous physiological signals, Bowel sounds
Received: 18 Mar 2025; Accepted: 12 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Liu, Wu, Yu and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Weidong Wang, Medical Innovation Research Division, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China
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