BIOLOGY 225 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Parasympathetic Nervous System, Sympathetic Nervous System, Heart Rate
Document Summary
The effects of fear and meditation on heart rate and oxygen saturation in blood. Stress has various physiological effects on the human body. The sympathetic nervous systems is involved with elevating heart rate, breathing rate, and vasoconstriction of blood vessels. In contrast, the parasympathetic nervous system combats this stress by counteracting these effects. In this experiment, the effects of inducing a stressful stimulus and relieving it through meditation were examined. 220 students at the university of michigan were shown a mediation video and a video containing a fearful stimulus. Initial and final heart rate and oxygen saturation were self reported and collected. There was a significant increase in heart rate for the fear-invoking video, and a significant decrease in heart rate for the meditation video group. Thus heart rate is concluded to increase with stress related stimuli and to decrease with less stress induced stimuli. Stress is a mechanism organisms use to respond to certain stimuli in their environment.
