Dispersion of refractoriness and induction of reentry due to chaos synchronization in a model of cardiac tissue

Ventricular fibrillation is a lethal condition caused by multiple chaotically wandering electrical wavelets in the heart, reentering their own and each other's territories. The development of effective therapies requires a detailed understanding of how these reentrant waves are initiated. In this Letter, we demonstrate a novel mechanism for inducing reentry, in which chaos synchronization causes large-scale heterogeneities of refractoriness transverse to the direction of propagation. These regions of increased refractoriness create localized conduction block, which induces spiral wave reentry.