Genesis of ectopic waves: role of coupling, automaticity, and heterogeneity.

ABSTRACT: Many arrhythmias are believed to be triggered by ectopic sources arising from the border of the ischemic tissue. However, the development of ectopic activity from individual sources to a larger mass of cardiac tissue remains poorly understood. To address this critical issue, we used monolayers of neonatal rat cardiomyocytes to create conditions that promoted progression of ectopic activity from single cells to the network that consisted of hundreds of cells. To explain complex spatiotemporal patterns observed in these experiments we introduced a new theoretical framework. The framework's main feature is a parameter space diagram, which uses cell automaticity and coupling as two coordinates. The diagram allows one to depict network behavior, quantitatively address the heterogeneity factor,

SUBMITTER: Pumir A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1366734 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature