Key result
Cardiac fibrillation arises through a quasiperiodic stage of period and amplitude modulation, demonstrating that it is a form of spatio-temporal chaos rather than a purely random process.
May enable predictability-based interventions in fibrillation; leaves open whether in vitro chaos findings translate to patient care.
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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Garfinkel et al. (1997) studied Cardiac fibrillation (Atrial and Ventricular). Cardiac fibrillation arises through a quasiperiodic stage of period and amplitude modulation, demonstrating that it is a form of spatio-temporal chaos rather than a purely random process.
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