Limit Cycle Oscillations in Pacemaker Cells

Abstract

In recent decades, several mathematical models describing the pacemaker activity of the rabbit sinoatrial node have been developed. We demonstrate that it is not possible to establish the existence, uniqueness, and stability of a limit cycle oscillation in those models. Instead we observe an infinite number of limit cycles. We then display numerical results from a new model, with a limit cycle that can be reached from many different initial conditions.