title: Dispersion of refractoriness and induction of reentry due to chaos synchronization in a model of cardiac tissue.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine (Cardiology), David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
authors.forename: Yuanfang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Daisuke
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sato
authors.forename: James N
authors.initials: JN
authors.lastname: Weiss
authors.forename: Alan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Garfinkel
authors.forename: Zhilin
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Qu
mesh_terms: 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