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. 1997 Jan 15;99(2):305–314. doi: 10.1172/JCI119159

Quasiperiodicity and chaos in cardiac fibrillation.

A Garfinkel 1, P S Chen 1, D O Walter 1, H S Karagueuzian 1, B Kogan 1, S J Evans 1, M Karpoukhin 1, C Hwang 1, T Uchida 1, M Gotoh 1, O Nwasokwa 1, P Sager 1, J N Weiss 1
PMCID: PMC507798  PMID: 9005999

Abstract

In cardiac fibrillation, disorganized waves of electrical activity meander through the heart, and coherent contractile function is lost. We studied fibrillation in three stationary forms: in human chronic atrial fibrillation, in a stabilized form of canine ventricular fibrillation, and in fibrillation-like activity in thin sheets of canine and human ventricular tissue in vitro. We also created a computer model of fibrillation. In all four studies, evidence indicated that fibrillation arose through a quasiperiodic stage of period and amplitude modulation, thus exemplifying the "quasiperiodic transition to chaos" first suggested by Ruelle and Takens. This suggests that fibrillation is a form of spatio-temporal chaos, a finding that implies new therapeutic approaches.

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Selected References

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