Parasympathetic-Sympathetic Causal Interactions During Continuous Affect Annotation: A Preliminary Study on the CASE Dataset

Among the many factors that regulate emotions are the complex interactions between the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). In this study, we applied a previously validated framework to quantify the causal flow of information between the PNS and SNS to the Continuously Annotated Signals of Emotion (CASE) database: a publicly available multivariate database for studying emotional states including amusing, boring, relaxing and scary. Specifically, we modelled the causal interaction between heart-rate variability (HRV) and electrodermal activity (EDA). We showed that among the various stimuli, only high arousal – negative valence emotional states were capable of triggering complex interactions between the PNS and the SNS. We characterized the psychophysiological state under emotional elicitation using dynamic parasympathetic-sympathetic causal interactions.