Nonlinear science research is a hot point in the world. It has deepened our cognition of determinism and randomicity, simplicity and com-plexity, noise and order and it will profoundly influ-ence the progress of the study of natural science, including life science. Life is the most complex nonlinear system and heart is the core of lifecycle system. In the late more than 20 years, nonlinear research on heart electric activities has made much headway. The commonly used parameters are based on chaos and fractal theory, such as correlation dimension, Lyapunov ex-ponent, Kolmogorov entropy and multifractal singu-larity spectrum. This paper summarizes the commonly used methods in the nonlinear study of heart electric signal. Then, considering the shortages of the above tradi-tional nonlinear parameters, we mainly introduce the results on short-term heart rate variability (HRV) signal (500 R-R intervals) and HFECG signal (1-2s). Finally, we point out it is worthwhile to put emphasis on the study of the sensitive nonlinearity parameters of short-term heart electric signal and their dynamic character and clinical effectivity. Nonlinear science research is a hot point in the world. It has deepened our cognition of determinism and randomicity, simplicity and com-plexity, noise and order and it will profoundly influ-ence the progress of the study of natural science, including life science. Life is the most complex nonlinear system and heart is the core of lifecycle system. In the late more than 20 years, nonlinear research on heart electric activities has made much headway. The commonly used parameters are based on chaos and fractal theory, such as correlation dimension, Lyapunov ex-ponent, Kolmogorov entropy and multifractal singu-larity spectrum. This paper summarizes the commonly used methods in the nonlinear study of heart electric signal. Then, considering the shortages of the above tradi- tional nonlinear parameters, we primarily introduce the results on short-term heart rate variability (HRV) signal (500 RR intervals) and HFECG signal (1-2s). Finally, we point out it is worthwhile to put emphasis on the st udy of the sensitive nonlinearity parameters of short-term heart electric signal and their dynamic character and clinical effectivity.