Neural influence is essential for synchronizing cardiac oscillators: A computational model

Abstract

Introduction Although the autorhythmic cells in the heart beat at a wide range of frequencies (80–15 bpm) in culture, in the whole heart they beat at a common frequency set by the normal sinus rhythm. Two nonlinear oscillators operating at different frequencies can synchronize only under special conditions which are expected to be more stringent for a large network of oscillators with a range of intrinsic frequencies. In this paper we investigate this problem using simulations involving Noble cardiac cell model.