ABSTRACT
The prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a multidisciplinary endeavor involving all the biomedical and social sciences that contribute to behavioral medicine. The purpose of this chapter is to outline the contributions that can be made by psychophysiology. The first section describes the features that characterize psychophysiology, and then reviews the research paradigms that are typically utilized. The remaining sections discuss the relevance of psychophysiological methods to CVD prevention, focusing on three issues: psychophysiological methods in the investigation of etiological processes, the use of psychophysiology in the prediction of vulnerability to cardiac events in people with preexisting coronary artery disease (CAD), and the role of psychophysiology in treatment and rehabilitation programs.
