Autonomic Nervous System Responses to Whole-Body Vibration and Mental Workload: A Pilot Study
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Summary
This pilot study investigates the individual and combined effects of whole-body vibration (WBV) and mental workload (MWL) on the autonomic nervous system (ANS), addressing a gap in understanding how these common occupational stressors interact. The research was motivated by the need to understand ANS dysregulation in drivers and operators who simultaneously face physical vibration and cognitive demands, which may contribute to health issues such as cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders. The study involved 24 healthy male university students who underwent electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring using a NeXus-4 device. Participants were exposed to five conditions: resting, WBV alone (3–20 Hz, 0.5 m/s²), low-level MWL, high-level MWL, and combined WBV with low or high MWL. Each active condition lasted five minutes. MWL was induced via a computerized dual task involving compensatory tracking and choice reaction time tasks. Heart rate variability (HRV) parameters were analyzed in both time domain (mean RR interval, SDNN, RMSSD) and frequency domain (LF, HF, LF/HF ratio) to assess sympathetic and parasympathetic activity. Results indicated that WBV significantly increased the mean RR interval and the high-frequency (HF) component, suggesting parasympathetic stimulation. Conversely, MWL significantly decreased the mean RR interval and increased the low-frequency (LF) component and LF/HF ratio, indicating sympathetic dominance. All active periods significantly increased the standard deviation of normal-to-normal intervals (SDNN). A significant interaction effect was observed between WBV and MWL on the LF component and LF/HF ratio, with the combined exposure producing a larger effect on these parameters than either stressor alone. Specifically, concurrent exposure to WBV and high MWL resulted in the highest LF/HF ratio, indicating pronounced sympatho-vagal imbalance. The study concludes that both WBV and MWL dysregulate the autonomic nervous system, but through different mechanisms: WBV stimulates both sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, while MWL primarily affects the sympathetic system. The combined exposure exacerbates this imbalance, particularly increasing sympathetic activity relative to parasympathetic tone. These findings highlight the potential health risks for workers exposed to concurrent physical and mental stressors and suggest that combined exposures may have synergistic effects on ANS function that are more pronounced than individual exposures.
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| archive | success | semantic_scholar | — | — | 6 | 2026-08-09 |
| extract | success | pdftotext | — | — | 4 | 2026-08-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-nvidia | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 17 | 2026-08-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-nvidia on 2026-08-10; verification: verified.
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- Empirical Findings: physiological data