Frequency Domain Information Decomposition: Application to Plateau Waves of Intracranial Pressure

The sustainment and/or resurgence of Plateau Waves (PWs) reveals a borderline cerebral situation of the pressure-volume relationship and is related to increased mortality. The intense systemic stress caused by PWs can be evidenced by the study of Heart Rate Variability (HRV), which is an indicator of the activity of the autonomic nervous system, namely the sympathetic and parasympathetic imbalance. In this work, heart and brain crosstalk interactions will be analyzed using a spectral decomposition of multivariate information measures, which provides frequency-specific quantification of the information shared between a target and two source time series. The spectral measures of information herein analyzed, integrated within specific frequency bands of physiological interest reflect the mechanisms of the cardiovascular/cerebrovascular regulation on this episodes of pathological stress.