Patterns of brain and cardiovascular activation while solving rule-discovery and rule-application numeric tasks.

It is known that solving mental tasks leads to tonic increase in cardiovascular activity. Our previous research showed that tasks involving rule application (RA) caused greater tonic increase in cardiovascular activity than tasks requiring rule discovery (RD). However, it is not clear what brain mechanisms are responsible for this difference.

Program running versus problem solving: two patterns of cardiac response.

Our previous research showed that mental tasks that involve program running (RUN tasks), e.g. performing arithmetic operations, cause greater tonic increase in cardiovascular activity than tasks that require a search for problem solutions (EDIT tasks), e.

Mental task demands and cardiovascular response patterns.

Though it is well known that solving mental tasks elicits tonic increases in cardiovascular activity, a good theory explaining the specificity of this effect is lacking. It is also unclear why different kinds of mental tasks elicit different response patterns. The aim of the experiment was to compare cardiovascular response patterns during three tasks matched for their duration (8 min) and probability of success (.

RUN/EDIT information processing mode and phasic cardiac acceleration.

Our previous research showed that tasks demanding running of ready-to-use programs (RUN tasks) caused a greater tonic heart rate increase than did tasks that require problem solving (EDIT tasks). We found also a similar though not so consistent effect in the analysis of phasic cardiac acceleration. The aim of the present study was to replicate the last finding using new experimental tasks.

Program running versus problem solving: mental task effect on tonic heart rate.

It was hypothesized that mental tasks that involve program running (RUN tasks) would cause a greater tonic heart rate (HR) increase than tasks that require the search for problem solutions (EDIT tasks). Three experiments using verbal, numeric, and graphic material were run to compare tasks matched for difficulty but differing in qualitative demands (RUN vs. EDIT tasks).