Dispersion of refractoriness and induction of reentry due to chaos synchronization in a model of cardiac tissue.
Ventricular fibrillation is a lethal condition caused by multiple chaotically wandering electrical wavelets in the heart, reentering their own and each other's territories. The development of effective therapies requires a detailed understanding of how these reentrant waves are initiated. In this Letter, we demonstrate a novel mechanism for inducing reentry, in which chaos synchronization causes large-scale heterogeneities of refractoriness transverse to the direction of propagation. These regions of increased refractoriness create localized conduction block, which induces spiral wave reentry.
Xie
Yuanfang
Y
Department of Medicine (Cardiology), David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
Hu
Gang
G
Sato
Daisuke
D
Weiss
James N
JN
Garfinkel
Alan
A
Qu
Zhilin
Z
D000200:Action Potentials; D000818:Animals; D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D004594:Electrophysiology; D006801:Humans; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D032383:Myocytes, Cardiac / Q000502:physiology*; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D014693:Ventricular Fibrillation / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology