Boundary-driven delayed-feedback control of spatiotemporal dynamics in excitable media

Abstract

Scroll-wave instabilities in excitable domains are central to life-threatening arrhythmias, yet practical methods to stabilize these dynamics remain limited. Here, we investigate the effects of boundary layer heterogeneities in the spatiotemporal dynamics of a quasi-2D semidiscrete excitable model. We reveal that a novel boundary-driven mechanism suppresses meandering and chaotic spiral dynamics. We show how the strength of the heterogeneities mediates the emergence of this regulation through a pinning-unpinning-like transition. We derive a reduced 2D model and find that a decrease in bulk excitability and a boundary-driven delayed-feedback underlie the stabilization. Our results may point to alternative methods to control arrhythmias.