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A Garfinkel, P S Chen, D O Walter, H S Karagueuzian, B Kogan, S J Evans, M Karpoukhin, C Hwang, T Uchida, M Gotoh, O Nwasokwa, P Sager, J N Weiss
J Clin Invest. 1997;
99(2):305
doi:10.1172/JCI119159
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n 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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