STEM Heart Rate Homeostasis Lab Write Up

Aiden pester, Henry Zhang, Owen Ondricek, and Shane Taylor

Introduction: When the blood returns to the heart it releases carbon dioxide for
the lungs to exhale. An important aspect of cardiovascular homeostasis is heart rate.
This results in a nervous response that increases the heart rate, thus maintaining the
level of oxygen in your cells and preventing homeostatic imbalance. The reason that
we wanted to take this experiment is we want to see if playing a certain genre of video
games will effect or heart rate. Our hypothesis is if you play horror games then your
heart rate would increase the most.

Abstract: For this lab we tested the effect of different genres of video games on people's
heart rates. We wanted to use this to see what was causing peoples heart rates to go up. To
find out we tested the fight or flight response with a horror game, action game, and casual
game. The fight or flight response releases adrenaline into the bloodstream, increasing heart
rate to bring it to muscles that need it. We tested this response by having people play three
different games of different genres and recording the heart rate of each person.

Material:
1. Get copies of the games Cuphead, Alien: Isolation, and Minecraft
2. Three computers with proper specifications to play the games on
3. Heart rate monitor or Samsung Galaxy S7 (what we used to test)
4. Three timers

Procedure:
1. For each person, take their initial heart rate by using the heart rate monitor on the
Samsung S7 and then have them rest for 30 minutes without playing any computer
games (looking at a phone should be okay) and take their heart rate every 5 minutes,
and record these into the data table. These are the control heart rates. Be certain that
the person is sitting for the entire 30 minutes.
2. Open each game(alien isolation, cuphead, and minecraft) separately on each of the
three computers
3. Each person takes an initial heart rate and it is recorded in the data table under 0
minutes for the game they plan on playing first.
4. One person goes to the first computer and starts playing their game(alien isolation,
cuphead, and minecraft). One minute after, the next person goes to the next computer
and starts their game, and repeat it for the final person. This is to give some delay so
everyones heart rates do not need to be checked at the same time. As soon as each
 person starts playing, start a 30 minute timer for each person and take each persons
heart rate after five minutes
5. For Alien: Isolation: it is recommended to begin at the part of the game where the
objective is to disable the alarm. It is the earliest part of the game with intensity and
starting the time at the very beginning of the game may not give a proper horror
environment. If you are not at this part in the game, then do not start the timer until that
objective shows up.
6. For Cuphead: start the game with the tutorial, and follow this path: Forest Follies (run
and gun), then Botanic Panic (boss fight), and then Clip Joint Calamity (boss fight). If
each of those is completed before the 30 minutes is up, then continue the game in no
particular order until the 30 minutes are up.
7. For Minecraft: start the timer as soon as the world loads up. There is no required area to
start in because it is the casual game.
8. Once all tests are completed, repeat steps 3-7 for each person , except everyone swaps
to a new game, after 10 minutes of rest so that the previous game does not affect the
initial heart rate of the next. Do this until each person played each game for 30 minutes
each.
9. Record all data taken in the data table
10. Create a line graph of the data in the graph
General Observation:
1. Participant one is really bad at our action game he couldnt even beat one level.
2. The action g ame is really hard
3. The horror game is really scary. The participant tend to be more on edge.

Data:
Participant One:
Time Heart Rate (H) Heart Rate (A) Heart Rate (C) Heart Rate (R)

0 74 74 67 80

5 69 66 71 66

10 74 75 77 71

15 70 68 75 69

20 90 88 70 76

25 63 66 72 83

30 95 65 66 72

AVERAGE 76.42857143 71.71428571 71.14285714 73.85714286

The spikes in heart rate in the horror genre of game at 20 and 30 minutes were taken after a
jump scare occurred in the game for the person.
At 20 minutes for the action game, the participant had just started to fight the first boss of
the game.

Participant Two:
Time Heart Rate (H) Heart Rate (A) Heart Rate (C) Heart Rate (R)

0 58 58 68 54

5 96 89 52 65

10 88 70 57 59

15 75 55 58 56

20 70 69 57 57

25 72 78 62 57

30 80 73 59 58

AVERAGE 77 70.28571429 59 58
At 5 minutes for horror, the alien revealed itself for the first time to the participant.

Participant Three:
Time Heart Rate (H) Heart Rate (A) Heart Rate (C) Heart Rate (R)

0 90 70 66 64

5 81 65 70 73

10 89 70 69 66

15 82 91 73 64

20 87 79 72 71

25 102 65 75 69

30 82 64 74 83

AVERAGE 87.5gog7142857 72 71.28571429 70

Across the board horror games had the highest average heart rate. This is most likely because
your body is preparing to enact in a fight or flight response. This is triggered by your body
thinking it is threatened or in a dangerous situation

Discussion: In this test a lot of things went well for example we were able to get really
good results for alien isolation, also we were able to take the tests with no interference. In a
scientific experiment there is always possible errors, for example in our experiment the heart
rate monitor took a long time to take our heart rate so our heart might have calmed down from
all the action leading to inaccurate results. Another error we had in our experiment was that we
set the three tests really close to each other and didnt have enough time in between for
everyone to take heart rate. This altered some of our timing. We could of improved this
experiment by having a better heart rate monitor for having accurate results, and three separate
rooms so we could not interfere with each other. This experiment could lead to the investigation
of can video games help our hearts for example preventing heart attacks.
Work Cited:
http://www.brainimmune.com/walter-cannon-homeostasis-the-fight-or-flight-response-the-sympa
thoadrenal-system-and-the-wisdom-of-the-body/