Scroll Waves and Filaments in excitable Media of higher spatial Dimension

Abstract

Excitable media are ubiquitous in nature, and in such systems the local excitation tends to self-organize in traveling waves, or in rotating spiral-shaped patterns in two or three spatial dimensions. Examples include waves during a pandemic or electrical scroll waves in the heart. Here we show that such phenomena can be extended to a space of four or more dimensions and propose that connections of excitable elements in a network setting can be regarded as additional spatial dimensions. Numerical simulations are performed in four dimensions using the FitzHugh-Nagumo model, showing that the vortices rotate around a two-dimensional surface which we define as the superfilament. Evolution equations are derived for general superfilaments of co-dimension two in an N -dimensional space and their equilibrium configurations are proven to be minimal surfaces. We suggest that biological excitable systems, such as the heart or brain which have non-local connections can be regarded, at least partially, as multidimensional excitable media and discuss further possible studies in this direction.

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