MODELLING AND ANALYSIS OF HRV UNDER PHYSICAL AND MENTAL WORKLOADS

In the first part of this paper we propose to revisit the closed-loop physiological model relating to human volunteers who are subjected to physical workload (stress), first proposed by Luczak and his research team in 1970s. The original model is further investigated and its parameters optimised via Genetic Algorithms using real data. The second part of this paper relates to the possible extensions of the model to model the effect of mental workload (psychological stress) on the cardiovascular system, namely heart rate variability. The autoregressive modelling based spectral analysis method is described and its application to spectral analysis of heart rate variability is evaluated. The assessment of heart rate spectra aimed at providing a meaningful measure of mental workload is also discussed.