Treball Final de Màster Universitari en Investigació en Cervell i Conducta. Codi: SBM024. Curs: 2019/2020.Cardiac Defense Response (CDR) is a dynamic pattern of cardiac reactivity in response to
aversive, intense and unexpected stimuli consisting of two successive
accelerating/decelerating components, whose psychological significance is attributed to
both attentional and motivational/emotional processes. According to the defense cascade
model, the CDR second accelerative component indicates the activation of the aversivedefensive motivational system. This research aimed to analyze the relationship between
CDR, levels of anxiety/depression, emotional regulation, and cognitive flexibility in a
sample of healthy participants (N = 120). The experimental task consisted in the
presentation of an intense aversive sound (500 ms, 105 dB) after an 8-minute rest period to
prompt the CDR. A battery of questionnaires (HADS, CERQ, and CFI) was administered
before the task began. Preliminary analyses did show no differences in the CDR pattern
between subjects scoring high vs. low in anxiety and depression. We divided the sample
into accelerators and decelerators according to their change scores obtained in the CDR
second accelerative component. Significant differences were found in specific emotion
regulation strategies and cognitive flexibility, with accelerators scoring significantly less in
both self-report measures. Our findings suggest that cognitive flexibility and adaptive
emotional regulation strategies might have an impact on cardiac defense response. It is
possible that difficulties in regulating ongoing emotions might be associated with low
cognitive flexibility, being key in the association of CDR and disease previously reported
in the literature
