Simulation of spontaneous cardiovascular variability using PNEUMA

In a previous study, we introduced PNEUMA, a physiologically realistic comprehensive model incorporating the respiratory, cardiovascular and neural control systems, aimed at characterizing cardiorespiratory mechanisms during sleep disordered breathing. The goal of this study was to integrate the pulsatile heart and comprehensive pulmonary and systemic circulation components into the existing PNEUMA model for investigation of the cardiovascular regulation mechanisms leading to heart period fluctuations. All model parameters were given on the basis of actual physiological data from literature. The autoregressive spectral analysis was performed to evaluate model generated RR intervals: the results of spectral analysis of RR intervals suggest that our model correctly accounts for major key aspects of autonomic control that are known to contribute into RR variability.