Statistical Physics Applied to Physiological Signals
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H. Eugene Stanley
 
Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics
Boston University, Boston, MA 02215

A major problem in biology is the quantitative analysis of nonstationary
time series. A central question is whether such noisy fluctuating
signals contain information useful for understanding underlying
physiological mechanisms. This review talk summarizes recent work that
analyzes physiological signals---principally lengthy time series of
interbeat heart intervals---using a range of approaches adapted from
modern statistical mechanics. These approaches include (i) detrended
fluctuation analysis of long-range anticorrelations, (ii) wavelet
analysis, and (iii) multifractal analysis.