¿Caos en el electrocardiograma de estudiantes con miedo a volar? Un análisis de no linealidad

International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, 2005, 5, 273-284 ¿Caos en el electrocardiograma de estudiantes con miedo a volar? Un análisis de no linealidad Jordi Llabrés, Xavier Bornas, Miquel Noguera, Ana María López y Francesca Barceló

Chaos theory provides a new way to analyze the psychophysiological functioning of anxiety disordered people. However, in order to apply any of the nonlinear analysis techniques, nonlinearity tests must be performed and nonlinearity must be found in the psychophysiological signal. In this experimental study we use the surrogate data method to analyze the nonlinearity of the ECG time series of students with and without fear of flying under several stressing conditions. The prediction errors of the surrogate data were found to be much higher than the prediction errors of the ECG signals (p < .05) in all the experimental conditions as well as during the baseline period. We conclude that nonlinear properties are in fact in the ECGs of the participants, and therefore it would be possible to analyze these signals with nonlinear techniques to get knowledge about their comnplexity, entropy, regularity, and so on.