arXiv subjects

Xiaopeng Zhao

Publications and source records attributed to Xiaopeng Zhao.

59 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2008

Indeterminacy of Spatiotemporal Cardiac Alternans

Cardiac alternans, a beat-to-beat alternation in action potential duration (at the cellular level) or in ECG morphology (at the whole heart level), is a marker of ventricular fibrillation, a fatal heart rhythm that kills hundreds of thousands of people in the US each year. Investigating cardiac alternans may lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias and eventually better algorithms for the prediction and prevention of such dreadful diseases. In paced cardiac tissue, alternans develops under increasingly shorter pacing period. Existing experimental and theoretical studies adopt the assumption that alternans in homogeneous cardiac tissue is exclusively determined by the pacing period. In contrast, we find that, when calcium-driven alternans develops in cardiac fibers, it may take different spatiotemporal patterns depending on the pacing history. Because there coexist multiple alternans solutions for a given pacing period, the alternans pattern on a fiber becomes unpredictable. Using numerical simulation and theoretical analysis, we show that the coexistence of multiple alternans patterns is induced by the interaction between electrotonic coupling and an instability in calcium cycling.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2007

Cardiac Alternans Arising from an Unfolded Border-Collision Bifurcation

Following an electrical stimulus, the transmembrane voltage of cardiac tissue rises rapidly and remains at a constant value before returning to the resting value, a phenomenon known as an action potential. When the pacing rate of a periodic train of stimuli is increased above a critical value, the action potential undergoes a period-doubling bifurcation, where the resulting alternation of the action potential duration is known as alternans in the medical literature. Existing cardiac models treat alternans either as a smooth or as a border-collision bifurcation. However, recent experiments in paced cardiac tissue reveal that the bifurcation to alternans exhibits hybrid smooth/nonsmooth behaviors, which can be qualitatively described by a model of so-called unfolded border-collision bifurcation. In this paper, we obtain analytical solutions of the unfolded border-collision model and use it to explore the crossover between smooth and nonsmooth behaviors. Our analysis shows that the hybrid smooth/nonsmooth behavior is due to large variations in the system's properties over a small interval of the bifurcation parameter, providing guidance for the development of future models.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2006

Alternate Pacing of Border-Collision Period-Doubling Bifurcations

Unlike classical bifurcations, border-collision bifurcations occur when, for example, a fixed point of a continuous, piecewise $\mathcal{C}^{1}$ map crosses a boundary in state space. Although classical bifurcations have been much studied, border-collision bifurcations are not well understood. This paper considers a particular class of border-collision bifurcations, i.e., border-collision period-doubling bifurcations. We apply a subharmonic perturbation to the bifurcation parameter, which is also known as alternate pacing, and we investigate the response under such pacing near the original bifurcation point. The resulting behavior is characterized quantitatively by a gain, which is the ratio of the response amplitude to the applied perturbation amplitude. The gain in a border-collision period-doubling bifurcation has a qualitatively different dependence on parameters from that of a classical period-doubling bifurcation. Perhaps surprisingly, the differences are more readily apparent if the gain is plotted vs. the perturbation amplitude (with the bifurcation parameter fixed) than if plotted vs. the bifurcation parameter (with the perturbation amplitude fixed). When this observation is exploited, the gain under alternate pacing provides a useful experimental tool to identify a border-collision period-doubling bifurcation.

math.DS↗

arXiv2006

Small-Signal Amplification of Period-Doubling Bifurcations in Smooth Iterated Maps

Various authors have shown that, near the onset of a period-doubling bifurcation, small perturbations in the control parameter may result in much larger disturbances in the response of the dynamical system. Such amplification of small signals can be measured by a gain defined as the magnitude of the disturbance in the response divided by the perturbation amplitude. In this paper, the perturbed response is studied using normal forms based on the most general assumptions of iterated maps. Such an analysis provides a theoretical footing for previous experimental and numerical observations, such as the failure of linear analysis and the saturation of the gain. Qualitative as well as quantitative features of the gain are exhibited using selected models of cardiac dynamics.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2006

Evidence for an unfolded border-collision bifurcation in paced cardiac tissue

We investigate, both experimentally and theoretically, the bifurcation to alternans in heart tissue. Previously, this phenomenon has been modeled either as a smooth or as border-collision period-doubling bifurcation. Using a new experimental technique, we find a hybrid behavior: very close to the bifurcation point the dynamics are smooth-like, whereas further away they are border-collision-like. This behavior is captured by a new type of model, called an unfolded border-collision bifurcation.

q-bio.TO↗