Volker Perlitz

Simplana GmbH, Aachen/Germany

Cardiorespiratory coordination (CRC) probes the interaction between cardiac and respiratory oscillators in which cardiac and respiratory activity are synchronized, with individual heartbeats occurring at approximately the same temporal positions during several breathing cycles. An increase of CRC has previously been related to pathological stressfu...

Intermediate (IM) band physiology in skin blood flow exhibits parallels with the primary respiratory mechanism (PRM) or cranial rhythmic impulse (CRI), controversial concepts of osteopathy in the cranial field (OCF). Owing to inconsistent manual palpation results, validity of evidence of PRM/CRI activity has been questionable. We therefore tried to...

Effects of osteopathy in the cranial field (OCF) frequently involve changes in skin blood flow (SBF) and autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning. ANS related frequency markers fell short to adequately explain physiological reactions in general as well as during OCF. An intermediate (IM) frequency band generated by a brainstem pacemaker expanded...

Objective Reticular brain activity described by intermediate (IM) band physiology exhibits parallels to controversial concepts of cranial osteopathy (CO), the primary respiratory mechanism or cranial rhythmic impulse (CRI). Interestingly, evidence for PRM/CRI activity has been reported using manual palpation, yet with questionable validity. Validat...

Distributed cutaneous tissue blood volume oscillations contain information on autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation of cardiorespiratory activity as well as dominating thermoregulation. ANS associated with low-frequency oscillations can be quantified in terms of frequencies, amplitudes, and phase shifts. The relative order between these faculti...

The dynamics of a rhythm band observed first in the ear skin microcirculation of awake human subjects were scrutinized using a naturalistic study design and nonlinear frequency and phase analysis. Since this frequency band with its centre between 0.12 and 0.18 Hz was slower than the respiratory rhythm but faster than the 0.1 Hz sympathetic dominate...

Supratentorial brain structures such as the insula and the cingulate cortex modulate the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The neural underpinnings of separate frequency bands for variability in cardiac and respiratory data have been suggested in explaining parasympathetic and sympathetic ANS modulation. As an extension, an intermediate (IM) band in...

In the following, we strive to sketch the evolution of two pillars of medical research, namely on the one hand that on research on the anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry of that what has become widely known as stress, and on the other hand on research and medical practice on rest or targeted relaxation procedures. A far cry from being complete,...

This chapter follows the steps undertaken by other researchers in the field of knowledge engineering in Medicine. The material here presented is concerned with four key issues: The nature of the medical knowledge, the characteristics of the reasoning processes in medicine, the automatic acquisition of medical knowledge, and the effective handling o...

Bariatric surgery has gained increasing relevance due to the dramatic rise in morbid obesity prevalence. A sound body of scientific literature demonstrates positive long-term outcome of bariatric surgery in decreasing mental and physical health morbidity. Still, there is a need for a manageable presurgical screening to assess major mental disorders...

The demographic transition in many industrialized countries may also lead to problems in the health system. In the elderly population, the vulnerability for diseases of affluence may increase significantly. Therefore, an objective of increasing relevance will encourage the patient to assume a more active role into prevention, therapy and rehabilita...

Im Rahmen der gynäkologischen Psychosomatik werden psychosomatisch erkrankte Frauen (und Männer, die Frauen werden wollen) untersucht und behandelt. Die Aufgabengebiete der gynäkologischen Psychosomatik umfassen folgende diagnostische und therapeutische Bereiche: Somatopsychische Symptome bei Reaktionen auf schwere körperliche Erkrankungen Psychoso...

The exclusive reproduction of short-term learned and pool-based contents in examinations may impede development of in-depth understanding. This pilot project suggests an approach useful to overcome this shortcoming by enhancing students' motivation for comprehensive learning using automatically added contextual questions in electronic examinations....

Watsu, HRV, Relaxation, HF, therapy

The spectrum of HPV infections ranges from subclinical infection and genital warts to intraepithelial neoplasia and cancer. The infectious potential as well as the necessary check-ups and therapies place a heavy emotional and psychosocial burden on the patient. Moreover, knowledge about the infection and its sequelae is limited. A stepwise concept...

Definition of the SubjectClinical psychology is a sub‐discipline of psychology engaged in the description, classification, explanation, and treatment of mentaldisorders. The primary focus is on psychological methods, models, and topics such as behavior, cognition, emotion, and social interaction with substantialoverlap with related areas in psychia...

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs across 15-20% of victims suffering physical injury. The occurrence of PTSD has been attributed to both the trauma and the victim's individual resources, such as resilience, coping strategies, and social support systems. In the present study, we explored the role of self-efficacy for cognitive self-regula...

Neurofunctional alterations in acute posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and changes thereof during the course of the disease are not well investigated. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the functional neuroanatomy of emotional memory in surgical patients with acute PTSD. Traumatic (relative to non-traumatic) memories increas...

With the present contribution, we attempt to merge the work of several generations of physiology and psychosomatics. The common denominator in an array of observation levels appear in these works as the relationship between irreversible-structural and dynamic-functional couplings and synchronisations. In this context, studies on the level of the co...

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is used in pharmaco-resistant epilepsy to decrease the number of seizures. Although it is well known that VNS affects respiration, there are only a few reports concerning an effect of VNS on heart rate or heart rate variability (HRV). We investigated the relationship between respiratory frequency and the high frequency...

A 0.15-Hz rhythm band in cutaneous blood oscillations in awake human subjects was studied in cardiovascular-respiratory time series of five subjects relaxing naïvely or practicing hypnoid relaxation (autogenic training, or AT). Time series analysis used nonlinear algorithms, time-frequency distribution (TFD), postevent scan (PES) method, and linear...

Selected examples from experiments in humans and dogs with time series of reticular neurons, respiration, arterial blood pressure and cutaneous forehead blood content fluctuations were analysed using multiscaled time-frequency distribution, post-event-scan and pointwise transinformation. We found in both experiments a "0.15-Hz rhythm" exhibiting pe...

Neuroimaging research on the neurobiology of chronic PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) has revealed structural and functional alterations primarily affecting areas of the medial temporal lobe (hippocampus, amygdala, and parahippocampal gyrus) and the frontal cortex known to be associated with the disorder. Using functional magnetic resonance ima...

The Autogenic Training (AT) is a well established relaxation technique and psychotherapy tool. We report the use of nonlinear routines, the Multi-scaled Time-Frequency-Distribution (mTFD) for the graphical display of vegetative rhythms, and Post-Event-Scan (PES) for the direct visual identification of coupling between physiological subsystems. Appl...

Psychotraumatologie ist eine noch sehr junge Wissenschaft im medizinisch Kanon mit einer großen fächerübergreifenden Potenz. Die Spannweite reicht von den operativen Fächern über die konservativen (Innere Medizin, Neurologie...) zu den P _ Fächern (Psychosomatik, Psychiatrie, Med. Psychologie, Palliativmedizin). Darüber hinaus reicht der Bogen von...

Neuroimaging research on the neurobiology of chronic PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) has revealed structural and functional alterations primarily affecting areas of the medial temporal lobe (hippocampus, amygdala, and parahippocampal gyrus) and the frontal cortex known to be associated with the disorder. Using functional magnetic resonance ima...

Neuroimaging research on the neurobiology of chronic PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) has revealed structural and functional alterations primarily affecting areas of the medial temporal lobe (hippocampus, amygdala, and parahippocampal gyrus) and the frontal cortex known to be associated with the disorder. Using functional magnetic resonance ima...

Social frameworks have influenced the understanding of trauma-reactive psychic disorders during the course of the past two centuries.The 20th century has further shaped this understanding by the various concepts established by the different therapeutic schools.The incorporation of scientific results, as well as the theory of complex dynamic systems...

1. We describe how potential artifacts (due to solution composition, buffering capacity of the bathing medium, size of the skinned fiber preparation, permeability of the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) vesicles, and proper Kd for Ca2+ of the fluorescent indicator used to measure Ca2+ transport can be avoided in order to determine the effects of inorgan...

The effects of graded hypoxia, graded reoxygenation after anoxic perfusion and of different extracellular K+-concentrations on cardiac energy metabolism and performance were studied in isolated, perfused, electrically paced rat hearts. Graded hypoxia was induced by different oxygen partial pressure (PO2: 736 to 43 mmHg, nine intermediate steps; O2...

Discussion: Our results show, that the classical HF-band limits are too restricted to allow the follow up of changes in PSD. Those changes are clearly related to variations in respiratory frequency due to stimulation. So, we had to extend the upper frequency limit to 0.5 Hz in order to be able to follow changes in the maximum of PSD due to stimulat...