Spectral and Nonlinear Analysis of Electrodermal Activity in Adolescent Anorexia Nervosa

• Main Authors: Zuzana Visnovcova, Lucia Bona Olexova, Nikola Sekaninova, Igor Ondrejka, Igor Hrtanek, Dana Cesnekova, Simona Kelcikova, Ivan Farsky, Ingrid Tonhajzerova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-06-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: anorexia nervosa; electrodermal activity; time-domain analysis; frequency-domain analysis; nonlinear analysis
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/13/4514

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder with increasing prevalence in childhood and adolescence. Sympathetic dysregulation is supposed to be the underlying mechanism of increased cardiovascular risk in AN. Thus, we assess the electrodermal activity (EDA) as a non-invasive index of sympathetic cholinergic activity using linear and nonlinear analysis in adolescent AN with the aim of detecting potential biomarkers for AN-linked cardiovascular risk. We examined 25 adolescent girls with AN and 25 age-matched controls. EDA was continuously recorded during a 5-min resting phase. Evaluated parameters were: time-domain (skin conductance level, non-specific skin conductance responses), frequency-domain (EDA in very low, low, sympathetic, high and very high frequency bands) and nonlinear (approximate, sample, symbolic information entropies, detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA)) parameters of EDA and peripheral skin temperature. Our findings revealed lower EDA values indicating a decrease in the sympathetic nervous activity in female adolescents with the acute phase of AN. Further, we found higher nonlinear index DFA in AN vs. controls. We assumed that nonlinear index DFA could provide novel and independent information on the complex sympathetic regulatory network. We conclude that the parameters of complex EDA analysis could be used as sensitive biomarkers for the assessment of sympathetic cholinergic dysregulation as a risk factor for AN-linked cardiovascular morbidity.