ArticlePloS one2021
Enhanced cardiac vagal tone in mental fatigue: Analysis of heart rate variability in Time-on-Task, recovery, and reactivity.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 28 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Approaches to inducing mental fatigue: A systematic review and meta-analysis of (neuro)physiologic indices.Behavior research methods · 2025Pooled it
- Monitoring stress and allostatic load in first responders and tactical operators using heart rate variability: a systematic review.BMC public health · 2021Pooled it
- Individual Patterns of Heart Rate Variability During Prolonged Cognitive Load with Mental Fatigue Induction.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Heart rate variability as a strain parameter in maritime settings: a scoping review of methodological approaches to data collection and analysis in field studies on the high seas.Journal of occupational medicine and toxicology (London, England) · 2026Review
- Validation of the ultra short term heart rate variability measures under changing psychophysiological state of the healthy participants at rest.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Multidimensional Fatigue Assessment of High-Altitude Electrical Workers: A Comprehensive Analysis Based on Physiological and Psychological Indicators : Electrical Workers: A Comprehensive Analysis.Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback · 2026Article
- The Impact of Mental Fatigue on Decision-Making Abilities, Visual Search Strategies, and Simple Reaction Time in Handball Players: A Randomized Crossover Study.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Target-Specificity and repeatability in neuro-cardiac-guided TMS for heart-brain coupling.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Predicting driver fatigue using HRV measures and machine learning.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2026Article
- The intervention effect of caffeine oral tablets on mental fatigue induced by nap deprivation: based on assessments of heart rate variability, cognitive performance and subjective fatigue-a pilot study.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Classical back massage is associated with lower heart rate and sustained mean skin conductance during recovery after cognitive load: an exploratory controlled pilot study.Frontiers in physiology · 2026Article
- When your heart isn't in it anymore: cardiac correlates of task disengagement.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Current Practices for Mental Fatigue Quantification and Induction in Movement Science: Introducing the SPeCIFY Guidelines.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2025Review
- Heart rate variability versus visual analog scale for objective and subjective mental fatigue detection: A randomized controlled trial.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
- Neurocardiac signatures of acute mental stress: a sex-comparative study.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Reduction of cognitive fatigue and improved performance at a VR-based driving simulator using tRNS.iScience · 2024Article
- Structural neural correlates of mental fatigue and reward-induced improvement in performance.Biologia futura · 2024Article
- Teacher stress in social interactions in the light of polyvagal theory. An ambulatory assessment approach to teachers' heart rate and heart rate variability.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- Acute Effects of Fatigue on Cardiac Autonomic Nervous Activity.Journal of sports science & medicine · 2023Article
- Videoconference fatigue from a neurophysiological perspective: experimental evidence based on electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiography (ECG).Scientific reports · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) has been suggested as a useful tool to assess fatigue-sensitive psychological operations. The present study uses a between and within-subject design with a cognitively demanding task and a documentary viewing condition, to examine the temporal profile of HRV during reactivity, Time-on-Task (ToT), and recovery. In the cognitive task group, participants worked on a bimodal 2-back task with a game-like character (the Gatekeeper task) for about 1.5 hours, followed by a 12-minute break, and a post-break block of performance (about 18 min). In the other group, participants watched documentaries. We hypothesized an increasing vagal-mediated HRV as a function of Time spent on the Gatekeeper task and no HRV change in the documentary viewing group. We also analyzed the trial-based post-response cardiac activity as a physiological associate of task-related motivation. Relative to the documentary-viewing, ToT was associated with an elevated level of subjective fatigue, decreased heart rate, and increased HRV, particularly in the vagal-mediated components. Based on fatigued participants' post-error cardiac slowing, and post-error reaction time analyses, we found no evidence for motivation deficits. The present findings suggest that the parasympathetic branch of the autonomous nervous system functioning as a relaxation system tends to be activated under increasing mental fatigue. In addition, the study shows that many HRV indices also seem to change when individuals are engaged in a prolonged, less fatiguing activity (e.g. documentary viewing). This finding emphasizes the relevance of comparisons/control conditions in ToT experiments.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.