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Updated: Aug 11, 2026

Uncovering Beat Deafness: Detecting Rhythm Disorders with Synchronized Finger Tapping and Perceptual Timing Tasks
Published on: March 16, 2015
Exported oscillator competition: a concept to analyze complex rhythms
A M Lacasta1, J M Sancho, F Sagués
1Departament de Física Aplicada, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Avinguda Gregorio Marañon 44, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain.
Abstract:
We study the interaction between two independent nonlinear oscillators competing through a neutral excitable element. The first oscillator, completely deterministic, acts as a normal pacemaker sending pulses to the neutral element which fires when it is excited by these pulses. The second oscillator, endowed with some randomness, though unable to make the excitable element to beat, leads to the occasional suppression of its firing. The missing beats or errors are registered and their statistics analyzed in terms of the noise intensity and the periods of both oscillators. This study is inspired in some complex rhythms such as a particular class of heart arrhythmia.
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