Effect of horror clips on the physiology of ANS & heart using ECG signal classification

The present study reports the effect of showing horror movie clip on the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the physiology of the conduction pathway of the heart of the volunteers. The volunteers were in the age group of 21-23 years of age and were of multi-ethnic culture. Horror clip was used to modulate the emotional states of the volunteers. The physiology of the ANS was studied non-invasively using heart rate variability (HRV) features. The changes in the physiology of the conduction pathway were monitored using ECG features and wavelet processed ECG signals. The HRV features suggested parasympathetic dominance during post-stimulus period. The time domain features were found to be significantly different using non-linear classifiers. Automated neural network based classification suggested > 80 % classification efficiency.