ArticlePLoS biology2023
Cardiac activity impacts cortical motor excitability.
Article in PLoS biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- Heartbeat-Evoked Responses in M/EEG: A Systematic Review of Methods With Suggestions for Analysis and Reporting.Psychophysiology · 2026Pooled it
- Cardiac cycle shapes spinal cord excitability.BMC biology · 2026Article
- No evidence for modulation of the readiness potential by respiratory phase during natural breathing.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Decoding time from space: A review of the complication clock and its representation of temporal experience.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Synchrony and Reciprocity in Rhythmic Interaction.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Review
- Cardiac systole is associated with enhanced go responding in an orthogonalized go/nogo task.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Bidirectional brain-heart interactions in health and disease.Nature reviews. Neurology · 2026Review
- Correlated amplitudes of potentials evoked in homologous muscles by magnetic stimulation reveal positive covariation of corticospinal output.Experimental physiology · 2026Article
- Respiratory Synchrony and Individual Differences Causally Influence Dyadic Interpersonal Coordination.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- The heartbeat evoked potential and the prediction of functional seizure semiology.Brain communications · 2026Article
- Heart-Brain Axis Dysregulation in Depression: Mechanisms and Implications for Neuromodulation.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2026Review
- Social and physiological stress elicit divergent psycho-physiological dynamics and motor cortex activation.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Cardiac, respiratory, and gastric rhythms independently modulate motor corticospinal excitability in humans.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Comparison of three behavioral cardioception tasks and heartbeat evoked potentials in the same group of healthy volunteers.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Respiration Facilitates Behavior During Multisensory Integration.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Epilepsy-heart syndrome: Concept, clinical context, and opportunity for integrated care.Epilepsia · 2025Article
- Height-dependent variation in corticospinal excitability modulation after active but not sham intermittent theta burst stimulation.IBRO neuroscience reports · 2025Article
- Evidence That Respiratory Phase May Modulate Task-Related Neural Representations of Visual Stimuli.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Posture-Dependent Modulation of Interoceptive Processing in Young Male Participants: A Heartbeat-Evoked Potential Study.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Article
- Decoding auditory working memory content from EEG aftereffects of auditory-cortical TMS.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Human cognition and action can be influenced by internal bodily processes such as heartbeats. For instance, somatosensory perception is impaired both during the systolic phase of the cardiac cycle and when heartbeats evoke stronger cortical responses. Here, we test whether these cardiac effects originate from overall changes in cortical excitability. Cortical and corticospinal excitability were assessed using electroencephalographic and electromyographic responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation while concurrently monitoring cardiac activity with electrocardiography. Cortical and corticospinal excitability were found to be highest during systole and following stronger neural responses to heartbeats. Furthermore, in a motor task, hand-muscle activity and the associated desynchronization of sensorimotor oscillations were stronger during systole. These results suggest that systolic cardiac signals have a facilitatory effect on motor excitability-in contrast to sensory attenuation that was previously reported for somatosensory perception. Thus, it is possible that distinct time windows exist across the cardiac cycle, optimizing either perception or action.
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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.