Four weeks of heart physics at KITP

Tim and Stefan spent four weeks at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) in Santa Barbara for the program “Multi-Scale Physics of Normal and Diseased Heart: from Ion Channels to Whole Organ”. This program brought together experimentalists, clinicians, physicists, mathematicians and engineers to study cardiac arrhythmias across the many scales of the heart: from molecules and individual cells all the way to the whole organ. Unlike a typical conference, this program was built around an extended stay with relatively few scheduled talks, leaving plenty of time for discussions, collaborative work and developing new ideas together.

Tim De Coster contributed two perspectives on how abnormal cardiac activity develops and how it might be controlled. In one talk, he used nonlinear dynamics to explore how small changes in the properties of heart cells can lead to major changes in their electrical behavior, including abnormal signals linked to arrhythmias. His second contribution focused on feedback control, using optogenetics to monitor cardiac activity and respond with precisely timed light stimulation. By combining an understanding of the underlying dynamics with targeted control, the goal is to stop abnormal activity before it develops into a more serious arrhythmia.

Stefan Luther focused on ways to control dangerous cardiac rhythms using much less energy than conventional defibrillation. His talk on Low Energy Control of Cardiac Arrhythmias explored how insights from nonlinear dynamics and cardiac physics can be used to develop gentler and more targeted approaches for terminating arrhythmias. He also presented at the accompanying teachers’ conference The Physics of the Heart and Teaching BioPhysics in the Classroom, connecting fundamental principles of cardiac dynamics with imaging, control and clinical applications. This provided a chance to share not only current research, but also ways of bringing the physics of the heart into the classroom.

You can find our two trans-Atlantic travelers underneath together with the majority of other researchers selected to partake in the program.