Multifractality in Human Heartbeat Dynamics

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that physiological signals under healthy conditions may have a fractal temporal structure. We investigate the possibility that time series generated by certain physiological control systems may be members of a special class of complex processes, termed multifractal, which require a large number of exponents to characterize their scaling properties. We report on evidence for multifractality in a biological dynamical system --- the healthy human heartbeat. Further, we show that the multifractal character and nonlinear properties of the healthy heart rate are encoded in the Fourier phases. We uncover a loss of multifractality for a life-threatening condition, congestive heart failure.Comment: 19 pages, latex2e using rotate and epsf, with 5 ps figures; to appear in Nature, 3 June, 199