Heart Rate Variability Analysis in Iowa Gambling Task:

A Glimpse of Patterns Hidden in QRS Complex

Po-Ming Lee
#
, Dai-Ling Hsieh
#
, Ya-Chen Chen
#
, Tzu-Chien Hsiao
#,*

#
Institute of Computer Science and Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan (R.O.C.).
1001 Ta Hsueh Rd., Hsinchu, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
labview@cs.nctu.edu.tw
*
Institute of Biomedical Engineering, College of Computer Science, National Chiao Tung Uni-versity, Taiwan (R.O.C.).
1001 Ta Hsueh Rd., Hsinchu, Taiwan (R.O.C.)

AbstractEmotion plays an important role in decision making.
Previous studies aimed on studying the relationship between
Inter Beat Intervals (IBIs) obtained from Electrocardiogram
(ECG), and the decisions made by subject, recorded in Iowa
Gambling Task (IGT). This paper is inline of previous studies.
We found that the results of between subject analyses indicate
that most subjects tend to make advantageous decisions rather
than disadvantageous decisions when their heart rate slows down
(p < 0.001). On the other hand, for within subject analysis,
through the difference of IBIs, an Artificial Neural Network
(ANN) was used and the obtained classification accuracy on the
outcome of subjects decisions exceeds 65% (higher than 50%,
which stands for guessing at random, p < 0.05). The outcome
suggests the existence of relationship between the performance of
human decision making and the psychophysiological activities
appeared right before they made the decisions. This paper
furthermore proposed a novel approach of analyzing patterns
hidden in QRS complex, which provides further information
than IBIs.

Keywords Decision Making, Emotion, Iowa Gambling Task,
Electrocardiogram, QRS Complex
I. INTRODUCTION
Researchers in the field of management, operation research,
and service science have been digging the nature and finding
ways to improve the performance and correctness of human
decision making in different situations for a long time [1], [2],
[3], [4].
In spite of considerable achievements in those areas during
the past several decades, there is a remaining issue unclear to
scientific research. That is, while human do not act like
machines, when they make decisions, they not only infer all
the possible options and the corresponding results, but they
also have feelings about the decisions they made, which
sometimes leads people to making decisions emotionally [5].
To cope with such issues, several approaches were made in
the field of finance in practice. One of the hot spot is system
trading techniques, suggesting that traders should eliminate or
minimize their emotions [6], [7], but developments in the area
of neuroscience have shown how difficult it is to get rid of the
influence of emotions by pointing out that emotion plays an
essential role of cognition and perception in human [8], [9].
Furthermore, Steenbarger demonstrated the new light of
research to cope with the influences of emotions by having
greater emotional intelligence rather than eliminate or
minimize emotions [10]. To summarize, it is crucial to
improve humans understanding on the effects of emotion in
decision making process.
II. LITERATURE STUDY
A. Emotion, Cognition, and Decision Making
Researchers have been discussed about the influences of
emotions on human decision making for a long time. During
history, most of studies considered the influences of emotions
in four aspects: the affective consequences of decisions, the
role of anticipated and remembered affect in decision making,
and the influence of emotions experienced at the time of
decision making. Some studies have shown that individuals
tends to adopted different strategies when they were
experiencing different emotions [11], [12], [13], and some
studies showed biases in memory recall due to emotions that
individuals were experiencing [14], [15]. Based on previous
studies, it is clear that there are some kinds of relationships
between experienced emotions of human at the time of
making decisions, and the decisions they made.
B. Somatic Marker Hypothesis and related studies
Recent studies on the influence of emotion on decision
making process mostly came from clinical observation of
neurological patients whose ventromedial (VM) sector of
prefrontal cortex was damaged (called VM patients). With this
disrupting patients' intellectual abilities were generally well
preserved, but they were unable to decide advantageously on
matters pertaining to their own lives any more [16], [17]. To
examine the patients, Bechara, Damasio, and Damasio et al.
proposed a famous card task known as Iowa Gambling Task
(IGT), which mimics the real life decision making situations,
including the components of uncertainty, punishment, and
reward [18]. IGT provides a way to generate numerous
decision making data from subjects which enable researchers
to study the performance of decision making in a quantitative
manner.
In later studies, researchers utilized IGT, collected fMRI
and Skin Conductance Level (SCL) data of subjects during the
task and found out that while VM patients neither improve
their performance as time passed, nor have any emotion
related psychophysiological responses in both situations of
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Volume 1 ,Issue 1, November 2012
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anticipating the possible outcomes and after receiving the
outcome [19], [20]. Further, Crone, Somesn, and Beek et al.
statistically analyzed normal subjects' Electrocardiogram
(ECG) and SCL data collected during IGT; found out that the
strength of psychophysiological response plays an essential
role in learning of optimal long-term strategy [21].
To explain the experiment results, Damasio and Damasio
purposed Somatic Marker Hypothesis (SMH) which stands as
a system level neuroanatomical and cognitive framework for
decision making and its influence of emotions. SMH suggests
that human store "links" between scenarios and their somatic
states at the time in VM. When human encounter scenarios
similar to the previously experienced scenarios, VM usually
induces bioregulatory states (including emotion states)
changes, which is believed to contained marker signals that
actually feedback to central nervous system to influence the
decision making process [22], the responses and influences
can be conscious or unconscious [23].
While SMH have demonstrated the framework and the
neural systems underlying, former studies based on IGT were
mainly focused on the effects of anticipation, and the affective
consequences of decisions. But since people are seeking for
ways to actually cope with the problem of biases caused by
emotions, a method which can precisely predict, or even
restrict people every time from making a decision emotionally
in advance, is important. And to move forward to the path of
making predictions in advance, an examination of whether
there are relationships between emotions people experienced
right before they make decisions, and the decisions they made,
is necessary.
III. OBJECTIVES
A. Hypothesis on the Pathway
People have feelings about their decisions and the
corresponding outcome, it is nature for human to have
emotions (which is believed to express themselves as
bioregulatory state changes) after evaluating the received
outcomes. The association between decisions and the possible
corresponding bioregulatory states were stored in
verdromedial prefrontal cortex, when people encounter similar
decision making scenarios, bioregulatory state changes
corresponding to the decision making scenarios will be
elicited, which finally bias the decisions. The proposed model
is shown in Figure 1, which illustrates how the received
outcomes elicit bioregulatory state changes, how the
association between decision making scenarios and the
elicited bioregulatory be memorized, and how the association
biases future decisions through bioregulatory state changes.
The physiological pathways are also listed.
B. Objective
The purpose of this study is to examine SMH in an
alternative perspective, as a preliminary study this research
focused on the biases of decisions, and the emotions that
subjects experienced at the time. The main focus of this thesis

Fig. 1 The model of the interactions between emotion and decision making
and possible pathways
is to examine the relationship between modulated heart rate
and the decisions made by people. To achieve the objectives,
this study conducted an experiment utilizing IGT, and
examined the relationships between Heart Rate Variability
(HRV) right before the subject made a decision and the
outcomes by applying Artificial Neural Network (ANN)
analysis method.
Unlike most of the recent emotion classification research
[24], [25], Ground Truth is well defined in this study. That
is, by utilizing psychophysiological data, instead of trying to
determine the emotions that subjects actually experienced, this
study tried to determine the decisions what subjects actually
made. The performance of ANN analysis on HRV right before
subject made their decisions was judged by accuracies in
predicting the choices that subjects actually made.
The next section of this thesis introduces the experiment
conducted, and the applied methods and materials. Finally,
this paper will describe and discuss results obtained from the
experiment.
IV. MATERIAL AND METHOD
A. Experiment (Computer-based Iowa Gambling Task)
Four university students participated in the study, ranging
in age between 22 and 27 (Mean = 25.5, Standard Deviation =
2.38; 2 men, 2 women). All subjects reported they were
healthy, with no history of brain injury, and had normal or
corrected-to-normal vision.
To mimic the decisions making processes in situations of
uncertainty in real-life, and to standardize the criteria of ways
to judge the performance of decisions, the study conducted an
experiment which utilizes IGT [18]. The examination
procedure of playing IGT is implemented by LabVIEW 8.6
(National Instruments, US). Each participant is seated in front
of a computer monitor, and the trial sequence started with the
presentation of 4 piles of cards equaling in appearance and
size presented on a horizontal row, A, B, C and D, followed
by a 6.0 seconds delay in which the subject could ponder over
the decisions to make. After 6 seconds delay will follow by
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cues (color changes of card back) indicating that the subject
could respond. Upon pressing one of the keys, the stimulus
display was replaced by a blank screen for one second,
followed by a 2.5 seconds outcome display showing money
gained or money lost, and finally replaced by the display of 4
piles of cards. Responses were made approximately 0.5-1.0
second following the cue, resulting in an inertial interval of
approximately 10 seconds. The length of the interval was
chosen to let psychophysiological responses return to baseline
following reward or punishment feedback and at the same
time to create a reasonable length to keep subjects involved in
the task [21].
Subjects were given a $ 2,000 loan of play money and
asked to make a series of 100 card selections by pressing one
of four keys corresponding to the piles (fingers from the
dominant hand were assigned to C, V, B, and N keys
of the computer keyboard which were mapped onto the piles
from left to right), and the goal was to maximize the net profit
presented below the cards in the gambling task (but subjects
were not told ahead of time how many card selections they
were going to be allowed to make). Because this study
required subjects to be involved in the task, at the beginning
of the task subject were told to receive reward ($ 200 NTD)
after the experiment if the final score they made in the task is
higher than 75 % of subjects. Self-report after the experiment
showed that it did make subjects involved in the task.
B. Experiment Task Format
All subjects performed a standard task that contained 100
trials which the gain and loss schedule was similar to the one
used in [18].
The ultimate future yield of each card varied, selecting card
A or B resulted in a gain of $ 100, whereas card C or D
resulted in a gain of $ 50. The punishment frequency of each
card also varied, punishment frequency was higher for cards A
and C (50 % of the trials) and lower for cards B and D (10 %
of the trials).
After selecting 10 A cards, the subject received $ 1,000, but
had also encountered five unpredicted losses of $ either $ 200,
$ 250, $ 250, $ 250, or $ 300, bringing the total loss to $ 1250,
thus incurring a net loss of $ 250. After selecting 10 B cards,
the subject received $ 1000 but had encountered one
unpredicted loss of $ 1250, also incurring a net loss of $ 250,
which means A and B are disadvantageous choices.
After selecting 10 C cards, the subject received $ 500, but
had encountered five unpredicted losses of $ 25, $ 50, $ 50,
$ 50, or $ 75, bringing the cost to $ 250, incurring a net gain
of $ 250. The same happened at card D, except that instead of
encountering five losses, there was one larger unpredicted loss
of $ 250. Thus, card D also resulted in a net gain of $ 250,
which means C and D are advantageous choices. Cards A and
B were equivalent in terms of overall net loss over the trials.
The difference was that at card A, the probability of loss was
frequent, but of smaller magnitude, whereas at card B, the
probability of loss was less frequent but larger. Cards C and D
were also equivalent in terms of overall net loss. At card C,
the probability of loss was frequent and of smaller magnitude

Fig. 2 IGT in decision tree point of view

whereas at card D the probability loss was less frequent and of
higher magnitude.
In sum, the main point was that at the point of subjects
view the schedule of gain and loss were at random, and in this
study the performance of decisions made by subjects were
judged by:

(1) QChoice: Whether the choice a subject picks up was
disadvantageous or advantageous (A/B vs. C/D).
(2) Net: Whether the outcome of subjects decision results in
reward (gain loss > 0) or punishment (gain loss <= 0).
C. Equipment
During the experiment, subjects ECG was continuously
recorded. The experiment task was presented using a general
PC with a 32-inch monitor.
Participants were seated in a comfortable bed in an EMI
shielding room (Acoustic System Inc. US) with the
elimination of most of noise interferences and electrical noises
(Shielding Effectiveness per IEEE-299: 100 dB, 10 kHz - 40
GHz) at a distance of approximately 1.5 m away from monitor.
The ECG was recorded from three Ag/AgCl reference
electrodes, attached via the lead-2 placement. The signals
were amplified by an amplifier and acquired by DAQCard
(National Instruments, US) with sampling rate of 200 Hz.
D. Heart Rate Variability Analysis
In order to examine the changes in heart rate, the Inter Beat
Intervals (IBI) series were extracted manually from ECG data.
To define the IBI time series, this study defined that during
every trials in IGT,

is an interval between two X

waves (where X can be either P, Q, R, S or T waves, details
will be described later) which includes subject response (the
moment subject made the decision by pressing C, V, B, N) at
k-th trial, more detail are shown in Figure 3. For example, to
define inter beat intervals between R waves during k-th trial
(

):

(1) If i < 0,

stands for interval between (|i| + 1)th

and |i|th R wave before subject response.
(2) If i = 0,

stands for interval between the 1st R

wave after and the last R wave before subject response.

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Fig. 3 An illustration of the time series of ECG inter beat interval and its
representation used in this research

(3) If i > 0,

stands for interval between (i + 1)th

and ith R wave after subject response.

During the HRV analysis,

and

came right
before subject made their decision, were computed, where:

(1)

stands for mean values of IBI time series from

to

on k-th trial (i is an negative

integer within [-1, -6], j is an negative integer within [-
2, -6]), similar to the time domain HRV analysis
techniques applied in recent studies on short-term
emotion recognition [24], [26].
(2)

stands for the difference between IBIs (

) on k-th trial.

E. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN)
Neural Network was an analysis technique highly
developed in the area of computer science, and had been
applied in many other fields, like finance, electronics and
manufacturing. By simulating the learning process of real-life
nervous systems in the aspects of connections and weights of
neurons, neural networks after proper training (achieved by
presenting previously recorded inputs to a neural network and
then tuning it to produce the desired target outputs) are able to
recognize patterns from data.
Neural networks have proven themselves as proficient
classifiers and are particularly well suited for addressing non-
linear problems. Given the non-linear nature of real world
phenomena, neural networks is certainly a good candidate of
doing psychophysiological data classification.
The results computed from HRV analysis (

and

)
acted as inputs to the neural network and the choices of the
subject (QChoice) and the outcome of those choices (Net)
were the targets. Given an input which constitutes the
observed values for the physical characteristics of a subject,
the neural network was expected to identify if the subject is
making advantageous choice or disadvantageous choice.
Training procedure of the ANN was performed utilizing
MATLAB Neural Net toolbox of a four-layer feed-forward
backpropagation network with 1 (input layer) x 30 x 60 x 1 x
Table 1 The detailed information of ANN used in this study, which output
were encoded as two-bit binary code

Layer1
(Input layer)
Layer2 Layer3 Layer4
Layer5
(Output layer)
Number of
nodes
1 30 60 1 2
Transfer
function
Linear
Hyperbo
lic
tangent
sigmoid
Soft
max
Linear Linear
Table 2 The Sample Raw Classification Data
Net Qchoice

1 2 21.409 155.591
2 1 -15.721 148.027
2 1 -3.056 142.605
2 1 0.355 145.17
2 2 7.922 147.112
2 2 -13.372 144.953
1 1 -12.599 156.261
1 1 -21.533 161.48
2 2 3.629 145.125
1 2 -18.252 148.383

2 (output layer) nodes, where details listed in Table 1.
The sample classification data is shown in Table 2, in
which the recorded pairs of data, including net gain (Net, 1
stands for losing $, net gain 0, where 2 stands for wining $,
net gain > 0) choices (Qchoice, 1 stands for disadvantageous,
where 2 stands for advantageous choice), concurrent
difference (

), mean values (mean value

of (

, (

, , (

as

) of IBI Series are listed

in table2. (The unit of

and

, were 1/200 second)

This study applied Levenberg-Marquardt backpropagation
as the backpropagation network training function and
evaluated the performance of trained network by Mean Square
Error (MSE) during training stage. All weights were randomly
initialized with same seed to ensure that the analysis results
are comparable. Training were stopped when early stopping
criteria were met or 50th Epochs occurred.
In the ANN analysis on within subject analysis 10 % of the
data stands for the beginning of the experiment were exclude
because in the pre-punishment stage described in [20]
bioregulatory state were unstable. Training data, validating
data, and testing data sets were partitioned from remained
dataset and the ratio of them was 3:1:5. The testing data was
not used in training in any way and hence provides an "out-of-
sample" dataset to test the network on, which gave a sense of
how well the network will do when tested with data from the
real world.
In order to reduce weight values and increase algorithm
performance, input data provided to the ANN was normalized
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Fig. 4 Illustration of the difference between IBIs lengths when subjects were
choosing advantageous choices and IBI lengths when subjects were choosing
disadvantageous choices; y axis stands for mean value of IBI lengths

to fall in the range between 0 and 1 using the maximal and
minimal value of each physiological signal. To judge whether
ANN perform well on tasks described in this study,
classification rates of guessing randomly if there are two
possible answers were assumed to be 50 % and 25 % if there
are four possible answers. In other words, the classification
rate of ANN will be fully judged by if it is statistically higher
than the rate of guessing the answer randomly.
V. RESULTS
The experiments totally acquired 400 rows of decision-
psychophysiological response.
A. Analysis Results Between Subjects
At first,

of all subjects were submitted to an

Independent-Samples t-test (using SPSS13.0) to examine their
difference between disadvantageous and advantageous
choices (QChoice, Performance of Decisions A/B vs. C/D), no
significant difference as expected appeared (for QChoice x

, QChoice x

and Net x

, Net x

).
But after excluding 4th subjects data, remained data come
up with significant difference (F = 11.741, p < 0.001) for the
mean value (

) of IBI time series of R waves between

advantageous choices and disadvantageous choices.
As shown in Figure 4, where x-axis (QChoice) stands for
advantageous and disadvantageous choices, y-axis (Means of

) stands for the mean value of IBI time series of R

waves, when subjects tended to make good decisions rather
than bad decisions when the lengths of their IBIs of R waves
increased (which means slowing down in heart rate).
B. Analysis Results Within Subjects
The study examined the relationships between performance
of decisions and psychophysiological data within each
subjects by using artificial neural network described in chapter
2. Comparison of the neural net classification accuracy
between IBI differences data such short-term index of heart
rate variability and mean values of 6 IBIs are shown in Table
3. table 3 showed the classification results (mean value of
Table 3 Mean Values of Accuracy of Recognition Results Within Each
Subject From ANN
Input
Output
QChoice (1, 2) Net (1, 2)

67.50 % 67.00 %

66.50 % 68.00 %

accuracies) of neural network from 4 subjects on testing data.
While as guideline of psychophysiological recording [27]
have mentioned, not only RR intervals but also intervals
between the remained PQST waves contained abundant
information of heart behaviors, but due to the restrictions of
pattern recognition techniques, former studies [21], [24] did
not examine all the PP, QQ, RR, SS, TT intervals.
Instead of applying analysis on only RR intervals, t-tests on
each PQRST waves on QChoice were also conducted in this
study, while there are no software in the world can perform
automatic extraction task on all PQRST points from ECG data,
we manually marks the points from 4th subject (extracted total
6,234 points from 240,000 points raw data). The PQRST
waves analysis on its means, and differences in different
window sizes and locations within around 6 seconds time
interval conducted below extend the representation of

and

, a new way to represent the indexes are shown below:

(1)

: Where X stands for different types of wave

intervals (PP, QQ, RR, SS, TT),

stands for
computing the mean value of XX intervals from XXi,
XXi-1, XXi -2 XXj.
(2)

: Where X stands for different types of wave

intervals (PP, QQ, RR, SS, TT),

stands for
computing the difference of XXi and XXj, that is, the
difference between XXi and XXj.

The decisions made by subject, the outcome of the
decisions, and all the combinations of mean values and
difference of PP, QQ, RR, SS, TT IBI series within 6 seconds
right before subject made their decisions were submitted to
Independent-Samples t-test (QChoice X [All HRV Indexes];
Net X [All HRV Indexes]), all the indexes examined
computed from of XX intervals (XX means either PP, QQ, RR,
SS, TT) are shown in Figure 5:

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Fig. 5 Detailed analysis on PQRST wave IBI intervals means and differences
in different window sizes and locations within around 6 seconds time interval

While there are many of the HRV indexes reached the
significance level of 0.05 of t-tests on QChoice, no indexes
have shown significant difference in the t-test on Net. The
examination results of IBIs on QChoice are shown in figures
below (Figure 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), where all the indexes reached
significance level of 0.05 were shown as arcs highlighted in
the figures. The results are also summarized in TABLE 4.


Fig. 6 Analysis on PP wave IBI intervals, where

, PPdiff26 shown significant difference (p < 0.05)

when subject are going to make advantageous choices and disadvantageous
choices


Fig. 7 Analysis on QQ wave IBI intervals, where

shown significant difference (p < 0.05) when

subject are going to make advantageous choices and disadvantageous choices


Fig. 8 Analysis on RR wave IBI intervals, where

shown significant difference (p < 0.05) when subject

are going to make advantageous choices and disadvantageous choices


Fig. 9 Analysis on SS wave IBI intervals, where

shown significant difference (p < 0.05) when subject are going to make
advantageous choices and disadvantageous choices


Fig. 10Analysis on TT wave IBI intervals, where

shown significant difference (p < 0.05) when subject are going to make
advantageous choices and disadvantageous choices

To summarize the detailed statistical analysis results from
Figure 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and Table 4, it is obvious that

, come out to be always important regardless of the type

of waves, mean related indexes ( ) perform better when
contain

, where difference related indexes () perform

better when contain

, and that P waves seems to

dominate

.
VI. DISCUSSIONS
A. Between Subjects
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As a securities trader in real life, 3rd subject reported that
the gain and loss schedule in the IGT was not at random, he
Table 4 Summarization of PQRST IBIs T tests on QChoice


quickly learned that card C was advantageous, and obtained
high score (3,600 points by estimation) in the end of the
experiment by repeatedly choosing card C, just like some
people in the highest performance group described in
[21].In the analysis results of between subjects there were
only 3 participants showed cardiac deceleration before
choosing advantageous choices, the remaining 1 participant
showed an opposite pattern. It is still unclear from this point
of view why the last participant showed an opposite pattern,
although it probably was due to individual difference.
B. Within Subjects
By applying neural network classification technique, the
table of classification results (Table 3) showed that there were
correlations between the heart rate changes at the moment
right before subject responses, and the choices and outcomes.
Throughout the entire statistical analysis on all combinations
of PQRST waves Figure 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,

were
found out to be important, an intuitive explanation is that the
bioregulatory states right before (around 1~3 seconds) human
made their final decisions, are statistically relevant to the
decisions they made. Compare to previous studies, the
preliminary results obtained in this study confirmed the SMH
in a short-term scale (per decision). But in the other hand, lack
of existence of significance of indexes that include

, ,

as their components might due to the design of the

experiment. Despite according to Crones study [21]
expecting subjects mental state return to baseline by giving 6
seconds pondering time between each trial to subjects, they
only examine psychophysiological data after subject
responses but not before the responses. In other words, to
design a better experiment for such study in the future,
pondering time should be extended, and whether a blank
screen should be added before pondering time should also be
carefully examined.
Mean related indexes ( ) perform better when contain

and difference related indexes () perform better when

contain

can be explained by there existed both global

and local trends during the process, which global trend
dominates

and local trend delayed a cycle, dominates

. The delay could cause by difference of pathways or

mechanisms, for example, caused by baro reflexs mechanism
of controlling blood pressure.
To explain why P waves seems to dominate

, while P
wave represents for the domination of SA node depolarization,
where SA node were known as pacemaker, one can said that
local trend seems started from SA nodes adjustment in its
frequency. However, no indexes reached significance level for
the classification result on Net, indicates that the model
actually learned by ANN is remained unclear, possibly due to
the non-linear phenomenon nature of the target patterns.
C. General Discussion
Unlike Damasio, Bechara, and Crones studies [16], [21],
[22], [23] which applied statistical analysis methods on the
psychophysiological responses related to anticipation and
receiving outcomes, this study utilized neural nets as an
analysis method, examined the psychophysiological responses
happened right before a subject made decision and
demonstrated the possibilities in prediction of decision and
outcome.
By demonstrating the performance of human decision
making might possibly be evaluated through
psychophysiological responses, which might leads to
application researchers in the area of decision making to a
new path of research: to find out patterns of
psychophysiological responses when a person makes
advantageous or disadvantageous decisions. But while the
probability of being biased by individual of analysis between
subjects is high, it seems promising to continue the study
focusing on the path of analysis within subjects.
Although there some promising results have been
demonstrated, several restrictions of the study should be listed.
Firstly, despite the statistical analysis between subjects and
within subjects have shown some results, another issue was
that former studies have demonstrated that cardiac
deceleration can be considered to permit sensory information
to be processed more effectively [27], which means biases
attention might be the cause of choosing advantageous choices,
but whether the biases of attention were caused by
bioregulatory state changes is still remained unclear. Secondly,
cardiac deceleration might also be triggered by orienting
response (OR), further clarification is needed.
Another issue was about the user expectance, the
instructions and SOPs used for the experiment should be
coherent to make sure that subjects do expect to figure out
the implicit patterns in IGT but not randomly choose the
cards, is important. And the cues color used in the
computer-based IGT utilized in this study, might also bias the
results we obtained.
VII. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS
In conclusion, instead of being focused on post affects and
the anticipation affect like former studies of SMH did, this
paper adopted the IGT and examined the emotions subjects
experienced right before making decisions by applying ANN
on psychophysiological signal classification. The results of the
experiment have shown that during IGT there are relationships
existed between HRV and the choices that subjects made.
Moreover, due to varying of choices that subject made, the
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outcome of the decisions somehow can also be predicted
through HRV, in mean values of accuracy level more than 60%
(significance level of 0.05 were reached out of overall 4
subjects).
Furthermore, this study also proposed a novel approach on
examine the possible hidden patterns in the QRS complex for
the IGT data, and demonstrated a way to estimate underlying
mechanisms of bioregulatory states influence on decision
making in a quantitative manner by utilizing information
contained in PQRST waves.
For suggested future works, although SMH related
researches have shown that subjects were learning during the
task in most of experiments, seeking a way to examine each
subject carefully to make sure the selected cards were not
selected at random, is also crucial. Besides heart rate, skin
conductance and skin temperature might also provide
abundant information of emotion changes, by adding different
sensors to the classifier, might improve the accuracy of
predicting the decisions made by subjects. However,
according to SMH, decisions are not biased by emotions every
time [23], so the guessing accuracy might have some
theoretical limitation, which at this point remained unclear.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was fully supported by Taiwan National Science
Council under Grant Number: NSC-100-2220-E-009-041 and
NSC-100-2627-E-010-001. This work was also supported in
part by the UST-UCSD International Center of Excellence in
Advanced Bioengineering sponsored by the Taiwan National
Science Council I-RiCE Program under Grant Number: NSC-
100-2911-I-009-101. Special thanks to our colleagues Yi-
Chun Chen, Ya-Fang Teng

in assistance of computer program
development.
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International Journal of Emerging Trends in Signal Processing
Volume 1 ,Issue 1, November 2012