Mika P. Tarvainen

Mika P. Tarvainen
University of Eastern Finland | UEF · Department of Technical Physics

Ph.D., Docent

About

193
Publications
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Introduction
Mika P. Tarvainen currently works as a Senior Researcher at the Department of Applied Physics, University of Eastern Finland and as Consultant at the Department of Clinical Physiology and Nuclear Medicine, Kuopio University Hospital. He is also the founder and CEO of Kubios Ltd, the company developing Kubios HRV software. His research are is medical signal analysis and physiological modelling, specifically focusing on cardiovascular signals.

Publications

Publications (193)
Article
Paired associative stimulation (PAS) is a combination of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS). PAS can induce long‐term potentiation (LTP)‐like plasticity in humans, manifested as motor‐evoked potential (MEP) enhancement. We have developed a variant of PAS (“high‐PAS”), which consists of high‐frequency PNS...
Preprint
Full-text available
Ventilatory thresholds (VT1 and VT2) are critical in exercise prescription and athletic training, delineating the transitions from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism. More specifically, VT1 signifies the onset of lactate accumulation whilst VT2 signifies the onset of metabolic acidosis. Accurate determination of these thresholds is vital for optimizin...
Article
Full-text available
Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis is often used to estimate human health and fitness status. More specifically, a range of parameters that express the variability in beat-to-beat intervals are calculated from electrocardiogram beat detections. Since beat detection may yield erroneous interval data, these errors travel through the processing cha...
Article
Full-text available
Objectives Chronic musculoskeletal pain is associated with decreased parasympathetic and increased sympathetic activity in the autonomic nervous system. The objective of this study was to determine the associations between objective measures of heart rate variability (a measure of autonomic nervous system function), actigraphy (a measure of activit...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Occupational well-being supports the retention of the nurse educator workforce and their ability to manage workload. There is a research gap regarding interventions promoting occupational well-being. Purpose: To evaluate the effectiveness of an 8-workweek digital occupational well-being intervention using self-conducted exercises amo...
Article
Full-text available
Objective A novel protocol for paired associative stimulation (PAS), called high PAS, consists of high-intensity transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and high-frequency peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS). High PAS was developed for spinal cord injury rehabilitation and targets plastic changes in stimulated pathways in the corticospinal tract, wh...
Article
In type 1 diabetes, it is important to prevent diabetes-related complications and postural instability may be one clinically observable manifestation early on. This study was set to investigate differences between type 1 diabetics and healthy controls in variables of instrumented posturography assessment to inform about the potential of the assessm...
Preprint
Full-text available
Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis is often used to estimate human health and fitness status. More specifically, a range of parameters that express the variability in beat-to-beat intervals are calculated from electrocardiogram beat detections. Since beat detection may yield erroneous interval data, these errors travel through the processing cha...
Article
Full-text available
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is globally the most common arrhythmia associated with significant morbidity and mortality. It impairs the quality of the patient's life, imposing a remarkable burden on public health, and the healthcare budget. The detection of AF is important in the decision to initiate anticoagulation therapy to prevent thromboembolic ev...
Article
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Multidomain interventions based on bio-/neurofeedback have proven useful in improving executive functions. The present study aimed to explore the potential efficacy and feasibility of an intervention that combined Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback (HRV-BF) and Near Infrared Hemoencephalography Neurofeedback (nirHEG-NF) on inhibitory control (IC) o...
Article
Background & aims The effects of calorie restriction and physical activity on autonomic regulation and cardiac vagal control in overweight and obese individuals remain inconsistent. Thus, this systematic review aimed to evaluate the weight loss effects through lifestyle changes on heart rate variability (HRV) markers in overweight and obese subject...
Article
Full-text available
Background The detection of atrial fibrillation (AF) is a major clinical challenge as AF is often paroxysmal and asymptomatic. Novel mobile health (mHealth) technologies could provide a cost-effective and reliable solution for AF screening. However, many of these techniques have not been clinically validated. Objective The purpose of this study is...
Article
Full-text available
Pavlovian conditioning holds the potential to incentivize environmental cues, leading to approach behavior toward them, even outside our awareness. Animal models suggest that this is particularly true for the so-called sign-tracker (ST) phenotype, which is considered to reflect a predisposition toward developing addiction-related behaviours. Despit...
Article
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Type 1 diabetes may, in time, cause lung dysfunction including airflow limitation. We hypothesized that ventilatory flow morphology during a cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) would be altered in adult men with well-controlled type 1 diabetes. Thirteen men with type 1 diabetes [glycated hemoglobin A1c 59 (9) mmol/mol or 7.5 (0.8)%, duration of di...
Article
There is a scarcity of evidence on the association between shift work, sleeping parameters, heart rate variability (HRV), and chronotype, i.e., morningness and eveningness. The aims of this study were to 1) compare participants with different chronotypes (morning (M), evening (E), or neither (N)) in terms of their total sleep time, sleep efficiency...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: The aim was to study the differences in autonomic nervous system activation between maximal tooth clenching task and handgrip test during and after the tasks. Also, the possible activation of trigeminocardiac reflex during the clenching task was explored. Material and methods: We compared autonomic responses to maximal tooth clenching...
Article
Full-text available
Aim: Atrial fibrillation (AF) detection is challenging because it is often asymptomatic and paroxysmal. We evaluated continuous photoplethysmogram (PPG) for signal quality and detection of AF. Methods: PPGs were recorded using a wrist-band device in 173 patients (76 AF, 97 sinus rhythm, SR) for 24 h. Simultaneously recorded 3-lead ambulatory ECG se...
Article
Full-text available
Reciprocal relationships between chronic musculoskeletal pain and various sleep disturbances are well established. The Pain and Sleep Questionnaire three-item index (PSQ-3) is a concise, valid, and reliable patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) that directly evaluates how sleep is affected by chronic low back pain (CLBP). Translation and cross-cu...
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Full-text available
Background Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common tachyarrhythmia and associated with a risk of stroke. The detection and diagnosis of AF represent a major clinical challenge due to AF’s asymptomatic and intermittent nature. Novel consumer-grade mobile health (mHealth) products with automatic arrhythmia detection could be an option for long-te...
Article
Full-text available
Aim To examine how work community factors are related to occupational well-being and work ability, and how occupational well-being is related to work ability. Design A cross-sectional study was conducted among home care workers in one municipality in Finland. Methods A self-administered survey on work and well-being was filled out by 167 employee...
Article
There is a scarcity of evidence on the association between heart rate variability (HRV) and chronotype, i.e., morningness and eveningness. The aim of this systematic review was to examine the association between chronotype, HRV, mood and stress response. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Cinahl, PsycINFO and Google Scholar for peer-review...
Preprint
BACKGROUND The detection of atrial fibrillation (AF) is a major clinical challenge as AF is often paroxysmal and asymptomatic. Novel mobile health (mHealth) technologies could provide a cost-effective and reliable solution for AF screening. However, many of these techniques have not been clinically validated. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is...
Article
Full-text available
Atrial fibrillation is often asymptomatic and intermittent making its detection challenging. A photoplethysmography (PPG) provides a promising option for atrial fibrillation detection. However, the shapes of pulse waves vary in atrial fibrillation decreasing pulse and atrial fibrillation detection accuracy. This study evaluated ten robust photoplet...
Article
The ‘dose’ of nature required for health benefits, and whether repeat visits to the same environment consistently confer health benefits, is unclear. We sought to provide proof of concept for testing this. Data were collected on repeated visits to either a natural or pleasant urban environment from 41 adults on three days, and at one follow-up asse...
Preprint
BACKGROUND Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common tachyarrhythmia and associated with a risk of stroke. The detection and diagnosis of AF represent a major clinical challenge due to AF’s asymptomatic and intermittent nature. Novel consumer-grade mobile health (mHealth) products with automatic arrhythmia detection could be an option for long-te...
Article
Full-text available
Background Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the major cause of stroke since approximately 25% of all strokes are of cardioembolic‐origin. The detection and diagnosis of AF are often challenging due to the asymptomatic and intermittent nature of AF. Hypothesis A wearable electrocardiogram (ECG)‐device could increase the likelihood of AF detection. The a...
Article
The purpose of the study was to examine effects of verbalization of affective experience on heart-rate variability and emotions (HRV). We measured HRV of 35 subjects while they were viewing and verbalizing 48 affective pictures (IAPS). Our results showed that sympathetic activity was lower and parasympathetic activity higher when subjects were verb...
Article
The paper describes the evolution of the heart rate changes of the infant from the newborn age to the age of 24 weeks
Article
Funding Acknowledgements Goverment grant, Heart2save Ltd cooperation. Background/Introduction: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia and a fast-growing public health problem worldwide. Main and the most severe complication of AF is an embolic stroke. Approximately 25% of all strokes are caused by AF. AF is often symptomless and int...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background Little is known about the associations of different depths of individualization of the exercise intervention on cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), metabolic outcomes and cardiac autonomic regulation in at-risk subjects. This randomized trial compared the effect of general physical activity (PA) guideline -targeted and highly individualized...
Article
Background: Associations of cardiometabolic risk factors with heart rate variability (HRV) in children are unclear. We examined associations of cardiometabolic risk score (CRS) and individual cardiometabolic risk factors with HRV variables in 6-8-year-olds. Methods: The participants were a population-based sample of 443 children participating in...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose To study the associations of physical activity (PA), sedentary time (ST), and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) with heart rate variability (HRV) in children. Methods The participants were a population sample of 377 children aged 6–9 years (49% boys). ST, light PA (LPA), moderate PA (MPA), vigorous PA (VPA), and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA...
Article
BACKGROUND: The work schedules of airline crewmembers include extended workdays, compressed work periods, and limited time for recovery, which may lead to cardiovascular strain and fatigue. The aim of this study was to evaluate changes in heart rate variability (HRV) during work and sleep, and with respect to work characteristics and breaks. METHOD...
Article
Background Atrial fibrillation (AF) is often asymptomatic and intermittent making its detection a major clinical challenge. A photoplethysmography (PPG) wrist band with algorithm-based detection of AF provides a promising solution for screening of AF. However, the shapes of individual pulse waveforms vary in AF decreasing pulse detection accuracy....
Article
Full-text available
Laboratory stress tasks induce strong changes in linear and non-linear indices of heart rate variability (HRV) among healthy adults, due to a task-induced parasympathetic withdrawal. Previous findings suggested that negative affectivity and its correlates (i.e., depressive symptoms, anxiety, hostility, type D personality, and situational stress) co...
Article
Full-text available
The time series of interbeat intervals of the heart reveals much information about disease and disease progression. An area of intense research has been associated with cardiac autonomic neuropathy (CAN). In this work we have investigated the value of additional information derived from the magnitude, sign and acceleration of the RR intervals. When...
Article
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Background: Heart rate variability (HRV) provides information about autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity and is therefore a possible tool with which to assess anaesthetic depth. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of isoflurane, remifentanil and dexmedetomidine on HRV before and after nociceptive stimulation at different an...
Article
Purpose: Heart rate variability is a commonly used measurement to evaluate functioning of autonomic nervous system, psychophysiological stress, and exercise intensity and recovery. HRV measurements contain artefacts such as extra, missed or misaligned beat detections, which can produce significant distortion on HRV parameters. In this paper, a robu...
Article
Full-text available
Aims: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common tachyarrhythmia and a significant cause of cardioembolic strokes. Atrial fibrillation is often intermittent and asymptomatic making detection a major clinical challenge. We evaluated a photoplethysmography (PPG) wrist band in individual pulse detection in patients with AF and tested the reliability...
Article
Objective: Sauna bathing is becoming a common activity in many countries and it has been linked to favorable health outcomes. However, there is limited data on the heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) responses to an acute sauna exposure. Design: We conducted a single-group, longitudinal study utilizing a pre-post design to examine a...
Article
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a significant cause of cardioembolic strokes. AF is often symptomless and intermittent, making its detection challenging. The aim of this study was to assess the possibility to use a chest strap (Suunto Movesense) to detect AF both by cardiologists and automated algorithms. A single channel electrocardiogram (ECG) from a...
Article
Background and objectives: Major depression disorder (MDD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) are characterized by the use of perseverative cognition (PC) as a dysfunctional coping strategy. We sought to investigate the dysfunctional physiological and psychological consequences of PC and how the valence of social interactions moderates such consequ...
Article
Background Though fairly benign reputation, the right bundle branch block (RBBB) can cause left ventricular mechanical dyssynchrony (LVMD). Still, the relationship between electrical disturbance and LVMD is partly unclear among these patients. Methods Thirty patients with RBBB and 60 matching controls were studied with vector electrocardiography a...
Article
Background Systemic autonomic changes are well‐known in migraineurs. Also, masticatory dysfunctions including tooth clenching are reported to be associated with migraine. However, if those phenomena are interrelated, and how, is unclear. Moreover, the knowledge on the autonomic responses to masticatory stimuli in migraineurs is limited. Objective...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this systematic review was to explore studies regarding association between occupational stress and heart rate variability (HRV) during work. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Cinahl and PsycINFO for peer-reviewed articles published in English between January 2005 and September 2017. A total of 10 articles met the inclusion cri...
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Full-text available
PurposeIndividuals with eating disorder (ED) are at an increased risk of cardiac arrhythmias due to cardiac dysautonomia, which may be exacerbated if depression is also present. The aim of the study was to use heart rate analysis as a marker for cardiac dysautonomia in patients with eating disorders and depression as a comorbidity. Methods Clinical...
Poster
Though fairly benign reputation, right bundle branch block (RBBB) can be a significant risk factor in special patient groups. The relationship between electrical and mechanical left ventricular (LV) dyssynchrony is somewhat poorly understood in this patient group. This study provides new knowledge of the electromechanical pathophysiology behind RBB...
Article
Background Donating blood is associated with increased psychological stress. This study investigates whether a blood donation induces physiological stress and if response patterns differ by gender, donation experience and non‐acute stress. Study design and methods In 372 donors, physiological stress [blood pressure, pulse rate, pulse rate variabil...
Article
Acute psychosocial stress is typically investigated in laboratory settings using protocols with distinctive characteristics. For example, some tasks involve the action of speaking, which seems to alter Heart Rate Variability (HRV) through acute changes in respiration patterns. However, it is still unknown which task induces the strongest subjective...
Article
Background: Abnormal electrical activation may cause dyssynchronous left ventricular (LV) contraction. In this study, we characterized and analyzed electrical and mechanical dyssynchrony in patient with left bundle branch block (LBBB) and healthy controls. Methods: Myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) data from 994 patients were analyzed. Forty-th...
Article
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive tool to perturb brain activity. In TMS studies, the stimulation intensity (SI) is commonly normalized to the resting motor threshold (rMT) that produces muscle responses in 50% of stimulations applied to the motor cortex (M1). Since rMT is influenced by spinal excitability and coil-to-cortex...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this study was to investigate fluctuations in heart rate variability (HRV), which reflect autonomic nervous system (ANS) function and potential psychological and physical strain, among 24 health care workers during work and sleep during four consecutive extended work shifts. Data included 24/36/12 hours of HRV measurements, two logbooks,...
Conference Paper
Type 1 diabetes is a metabolic disorder, which has been associated with decreased heart rate variability (HRV) and increased risk for adverse cardiac events. The aim of this paper was to examine HRV dynamics during a cardiorespiratory exercise test. 13 male subjects with type 1 diabetes (age 33.0±6.7 years) and 25 healthy male controls (age 33.7±7....
Article
People suffering from depression perceive themselves and their surroundings as more negative than healthy ones. An explanation might be that depressed individuals experience negative information as more stressful than non-depressed subjects and, consequently, respond in an amplified manner on a subjective and physiological level. To test this propo...
Article
Full-text available
This technical note introduces an easy to use macro in Office Excel to batch the output from Kubios HRV 2.2, which is a software program for heart rate variability (HRV) data extraction. Due to a new release of the program previous solutions have become outdated. The current macro simplifies and substantially reduces the time needed to post-process...
Article
Full-text available
The longitudinal motion of the carotid wall is a potential new measure of arterial stiffness. Despite the over decade long research on the subject, the driving force and the specific longitudinal kinetics of the carotid wall has remained unclear. In this study, a transfer function analysis with 20 healthy subjects is presented to derive how the ene...
Article
Full-text available
Little is known how the brain of the newborn infant responds to the postnatal nutrition and care. No systematic studies exist in which the effects of nutritional and non-nutritional sucking on the brain activity of the infant were compared. We recorded the EEG activity of 40 infants at the ages of 0,6,12 and 24 weeks in four successive behavioral s...
Article
The longitudinal motion of the carotid wall during a heart cycle has a multiphasic waveform. Recent studies have examined the amplitude of this motion. Instead of amplitude measurements, we focus on making a detailed characterization of the motion waveform. Two-minute carotid ultrasound videos were obtained for 19 healthy volunteers, and a speckle...
Conference Paper
Using food as a stimuli is known to cause multiple psychophysiological reactions. Heart rate variability (HRV) is common tool for assessing physiological reactions in autonomic nervous system. However, the findings in HRV related to food stimuli have not been consistent. In this paper the quick changes in HRV related to positive and negative food a...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Socioeconomic status (SES) is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and either low or high heart rate variability (HRV) at rest has been shown to predict cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The study investigated the extent HRV features can predict SES. Four hundred and twenty eight people were randomly selected from the commercial dis...
Article
Background: There are few studies on determinants of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) among girls and boys separately in population samples of children. Methods: We therefore investigated the determinants of CRF, assessed by maximal workload per height using allometric scaling, in a population sample of 162 girls and 177 boys aged 6-8 years using...
Article
Full-text available
Walking within nature (Green Exercise) has been shown to immediately enhance mental well-being but less is known about the impact on physiology and longer lasting effects. Heart rate variability (HRV) gives an indication of autonomic control of the heart, in particular vagal activity, with reduced HRV identified as a risk factor for cardiovascular...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of the study was to examine associations between psychophysiological responses and emotionally arousing visual food and nonfood stimuli. Eighteen healthy normal weight female volunteers were recruited. The stimulus materials consisted of pretested pictures which each had 2 features, valence (positive/negative) and category (food/nonfood). P...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa present with a significant cardiovascular associated risk of sudden cardiac death. Bradycardia is a serious complication of eating disorders. Methods: Eating Disorder (ED) patients were admitted to a 6-week treatment program and assessed for of heart rate variability (HRV) at entrance to the pro...
Article
Full-text available
There is convergent evidence that natural environments allow restoration from stress. This randomised, cross-over, field-based trial compared psychological and physiological responses of unstressed individuals to self-paced 30-min walks in three pleasant environments: residential (urban), natural (green), and natural with water (blue). Changes from...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Eating Disorder (ED) patients who were admitted to an eating disorders program for a 6-week treatment and were assessed for changes in heart rate variability (HRV). Linear heart rate variability measures (HRV) were determined using Kubios software from 20 minute, Lead 3 ECG recordings following a 5-minute rest period. Eighteen patients and 31 contr...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Sudden cardiac death (SCD) has been reported during and following physical activity. SCD may be due to vagal withdrawal and/or sympathetic dominance associated with the exercise occurring at any time during, immediately following, or up to several days after exercise. Heart rate variability (HRV) describes the influence of the autonomic nervous sys...
Article
Full-text available
The present study investigated the nature of physiological cue reactivity and craving in response to alcohol cues among alcohol-dependent patients (N = 80) who were enrolled in detoxification treatment. Further, the predictive value with regard to future drinking of both the magnitude of the physiological and craving response to alcohol cues while...
Conference Paper
Levodopa is the main treatment method for reducing the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Whereas it reduces the motor symptoms efficiently, its effect on autonomous nervous system is not clear. The information about effect of levodopa on heart rate variability is not coherent between the studies. In this study, ECG of 11 patients with Parkinson's di...