ABSTRACT
We consider a three-domain model of cardiac tissue consisting of fibroblasts, myocytes, and extracellular space. We show in the one dimensional case that the fibroblasts with different resting potentials may alter restitution properties of tissue. On this basis we demonstrated that in two dimensional slice of cardiac tissue, a spiral wave break up can be caused purely by the influence of fibroblasts and, vice-versa, initially unstable spiral can be stabilized by fibroblasts depending on the value of their resting potential.
Subject(s)
Electrophysiological Phenomena , Fibroblasts/physiology , Action Potentials/physiology , Heart/physiology , Humans , Models, Cardiovascular , Myocytes, Cardiac/cytologyABSTRACT
Synchronous behavior in networks of coupled oscillators is a commonly observed phenomenon attracting a growing interest in physics, biology, communication, and other fields of science and technology. Besides global synchronization, one can also observe splitting of the full network into several clusters of mutually synchronized oscillators. In this paper, we study the conditions for such cluster partitioning into ensembles for the case of identical chaotic systems. We focus mainly on the existence and the stability of unique unconditional clusters whose rise does not depend on the origin of the other clusters. Also, conditional clusters in arrays of globally nonsymmetrically coupled identical chaotic oscillators are investigated. The design problem of organizing clusters into a given configuration is discussed.
