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Updated: Aug 5, 2026

External Excitation of Neurons Using Electric and Magnetic Fields in One- and Two-dimensional Cultures
Published on: May 7, 2017
Standing excitation waves in the heart induced by strong alternating electric fields
R A Gray1, O A Mornev, J Jalife
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1670 University Boulevard, B140 Volker Hall, Birmingham, Alabama 35294-0019, USA. rag@crml.uab.edu
Abstract:
We studied the effect of sinusoidal electric fields on cardiac tissue both experimentally and numerically. We found that periodic forcing at 5-20 Hz using voltage applied in the bathing solution could stop the propagation of excitation waves by producing standing waves of membrane depolarization. These patterns were independent of the driving frequency in contrast to classical standing waves. The stimulus strength required for pattern formation was large compared to the excitation threshold. A novel tridomain representation of cardiac tissue was required to reproduce this behavior numerically.
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