Presents
The KITP Public Lecture Series
Bringing Order to Chaotic Hearts
sponsored by Friends of KITP
Abstract:
Transitions from order to chaos have been widely studied by physicists
in the context of fluid turbulence and other dynamical systems. Recently,
physicists have teamed up with biologists and clinicians to help
tame cardiac fibrillation, a form of wave turbulence that stops the
heart from pumping blood and is the leading cause of sudden death
among industrialized nations. Medical doctors routinely defibrillate
patients on the show ER and in real life. Some high risk patients can
carry implantable defibrillators. However, reducing mortality in the wider
population of patients who die suddenly and unpredictably
from ventricular fibrillation has remained a major challenge.
At the heart of this challenge is a quest
for a fundamental understanding of electrical waves
that propagate contraction through the main chambers of the heart.
These highly nonlinear waves behave quite differently
from the linear waves that propagate sound or light.
Plane waves annihilate when they collide and can break up into rapidly
rotating
spiral-shaped waves that are widely believed to cause fibrillation.
Furthermore, wave propagation is governed by an electrical circuitry of
bewieldering complexity at molecular, cellular, and tissue scales.
In this lecture, I will review the rich scientific history that has lead to
modern conceptualizations of fibrillation. I will also discuss
recent insights into wave dynamics from a physics perspective that
offers new prospects to tame cardiac fibrillation and goes
beyond the limitations of current therapies.
Biographical sketch:
Alain Karma is a Professor of Physics and College of Arts and Sciences
Distinguished
Professor at Northeastern University, as well as Interim Director of the
Center
for Interdisciplinary Research on Complex Systems. Prior to joining
Northeastern, he
received his PhD in Physics from the University of California at Santa
Barbara in 1985
and subsequently held a 3-year postdoctoral appointment at the California
Institute of Technology as
a Weingart Research Fellow in Theoretical Physics. His research focuses on
theoretical
understanding of the emergence of nonequilibrium patterns
with applications to a wide range of problems in materials science and
biology.
He has authored widely cited groundbreaking papers that introduced a
paradigm shift away from old beliefs about what causes electrical wave
turbulence in the heart.