Rhythms of the body: from heart sounds to the brain–heart axis

First, you hear the heart

More than two centuries after the stethoscope, heart sounds remain the first gate of cardiovascular examination. But ears have limits: even seasoned clinicians can miss a fleeting murmur. Related methodology on automatic S1/S2 time-label segmentation has been published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence; results are bounded by the data and validation conditions reported in the papers, not a beat-by-beat promise.

Time-label segmentation of heart sounds and S3 clinical research are different evidence questions; a systematic review compared S3 with LVEF for heart-failure diagnosis — neither implies that this site or software has clinical recognition capability.

beyond heart sounds, the brain

The heart is not an isolated pump. In acute sleep-deprivation experiments, heart-sound features changed alongside brain function — brain and heart in close dialogue via the autonomic nervous system. The team drew this as "The dialogue between brain and heart": brain above, heart below, one green line connecting.

A further exploratory study examined deep magnetic stimulation on the sleep-deprived brain–heart axis. The mechanism is not fully clear, but the direction points to one place: guard the heart, and see the brain.

Sleep calibrates the rhythm

"The brain's cleaning system in sleep" adds the third rhythm — the circadian — to a mechanism diagram: sleep deprivation, hippocampal neurons and glymphatic clearance, three knowledge zones in one causal chain.

Three rhythms, three illustration sets, one thread: the body is an interlocking system. That is why the team makes the Body Sounds series — turning invisible rhythms into visible knowledge.

Works featured in this story

Heart-sound segmentation research
Science animation

The dialogue between brain and heart
Medical mechanism diagram

The brain's "cleaning system" in sleep
Medical mechanism diagram

The Voice of the Heart (personified sketch)
Artistic science animation

Related publications

• Construction and validation of a method for automated time label segmentation of heart sounds
  Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence · 2023 · doi.org/10.3389/frai.2023.1309750
• A systemic review and meta-analysis comparing the ability of diagnostic of the third heart sound and left ventricular ejection fraction in heart failure
  Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine · 2022 · doi.org/10.3389/fcvm.2022.918051
• Changes in brain function and heart sound in acute sleep deprivation individuals
  Sleep Medicine · 2023 · doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2023.11.040
• The effect of deep magnetic stimulation on the cardiac-brain axis post-sleep deprivation: a pilot study
  Frontiers in Neuroscience · 2024 · doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2024.1464299

Citations are compiled from the team CV; journal versions prevail. Illustrations are topically related; image–paper relationships follow the originals.