AUTHOR=Heusser Karsten , Heusser Ramona , Jordan Jens , Urechie Vasile , Diedrich André , Tank Jens 

TITLE=Baroreflex Curve Fitting Using a WYSIWYG Boltzmann Sigmoidal Equation

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neuroscience

VOLUME=15

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2021.697582

DOI=10.3389/fnins.2021.697582

ISSN=1662-453X

ABSTRACT=<p>Arterial baroreflex assessment using vasoactive substances enables investigators to collect data pairs over a wide range of blood pressures and reflex reactions. These data pairs relate intervals between heartbeats or sympathetic neural activity to blood pressure values. In an X-Y plot the data points scatter around a sigmoidal curve. After fitting the parameters of a sigmoidal function to the data, the graph’s characteristics represent a rather comprehensive quantitative reflex description. Variants of the 4-parameter Boltzmann sigmoidal equation are widely used for curve fitting. Unfortunately, their ‘slope parameters’ do not correspond to the graph’s actual slope which complicates the analysis and bears the risk of misreporting. We propose a modified Boltzmann sigmoidal function with preserved goodness of fit whose parameters are one-to-one equivalent to the sigmoidal curve’s characteristics.</p>