Abstract

The Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction is one of the most interesting and best understood chemical oscillators. It has been conjectured that certain biological phenomena have important features in common with this reaction. We investigate the Field-Noyes model of this reaction and demonstrate that there is a range of values of the stoichiometric parameter, f, over which the model exhibits “threshold phenomena.” That is, if a perturbation from the steady state exceeds a certain “threshold” value then a solution in the form of a “spike” results followed by its return to the steady state. We show that the underlying mathematical structure of this model resembles very closely the underlying mathematical structure of the Hodgkin-Huxley nerve conduction equations which exhibit the same sort of threshold phenomena.

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