Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to I Sendiña-Nadal.
The geometry of an active medium can cause wave blocking and induce unidirectional propagation. This well established phenomenon was studied in a previous paper within the framework of the photosensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction and the associated Oregonator model. In the present paper, as an extension of that study, the main factors that influence this phenomenon are interpreted in terms of a kinematic model.
We study both experimentally and numerically the temporal coherence of noise-induced wave nucleations in excitable media subjected to external fluctuations with finite correlation time. The experiments are performed with the light-sensitive variant of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction forced by an exponentially correlated dichotomous fluctuating illumination. We find that there exists an optimal correlation time for which nucleations coherence reaches a maximum. The same behavior is obtained in numerical simulations with a stochastic Oregonator model, modified to describe the light-sensitive BZ reaction.
We investigate the impact of domain shape on wave propagation in excitable media. Channeled domains with sinusoidal boundaries are considered. Trains of fronts generated periodically at an extreme of the channel are found to adopt a quasiperiodic spatial configuration that repeats periodically in time. The phenomenon is numerically studied in a model for a photosensitive Belousov-Zabotinsky reaction. Spatial return maps for the height and position of the successive fronts are analytically obtained, and reveal the similarity between this spatial quasiperiodicity and the temporal quasiperiodicity appearing in forced oscillators.
A pacemaker, regularly emitting chemical waves, is created out of noise when an excitable photosensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky medium, strictly unable to autonomously initiate autowaves, is forced with a spatiotemporal patterned random illumination. These experimental observations are also reproduced numerically by using a set of reaction-diffusion equations for an activator-inhibitor model, and further analytically interpreted in terms of genuine coupling effects arising from parametric fluctuations. Within the same framework we also address situations of noise-sustained propagation in subexcitable media.
Wave propagation in a photosensitive, subexcitable Belousov-Zhabotinsky medium is made possible by periodic modulation of a homogeneous illumination field. The propagation can be understood in terms of an interplay between the radial expansion of the wave and the motion of its free ends as the excitability varies periodically. This description leads to a simple kinematic analysis that provides insights into the initial conditions and forcing parameters giving rise to sustained wave propagation.