Supernormal conduction in cardiac tissue promotes concordant alternans and action potential bunching

Supernormal conduction (SNC) in excitable cardiac tissue refers to an increase of pulse (or action potential) velocity with decreasing distance to the preceding pulse. Here we employ a simple ionic model to study the effect of SNC on the propagation of action potentials (APs) and the phenomenology o...

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Published inPhysical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics Vol. 83; no. 4 Pt 1; p. 040902
Main Authors Echebarria, Blas, Röder, Georg, Engel, Harald, Davidsen, Jörn, Bär, Markus
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 04.04.2011
Subjects
Action Potentials - physiology
Animals
Biological Clocks - physiology
Computer Simulation
Heart Conduction System - physiology
Humans
Models, Cardiovascular
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Summary:Supernormal conduction (SNC) in excitable cardiac tissue refers to an increase of pulse (or action potential) velocity with decreasing distance to the preceding pulse. Here we employ a simple ionic model to study the effect of SNC on the propagation of action potentials (APs) and the phenomenology of alternans in excitable cardiac tissue. We use bifurcation analysis and simulations to study attraction between propagating APs caused by SNC that leads to AP pairs and bunching. It is shown that SNC stabilizes concordant alternans in arbitrarily long paced one-dimensional cables. As a consequence, spiral waves in two-dimensional tissue simulations exhibit straight nodal lines for SNC in contrast to spiraling ones in the case of normal conduction.
ISSN:1550-2376
DOI:10.1103/physreve.83.040902