Applications · Life sciences
Chaos in biology and physiology
Once dismissed as 'noise', chaotic dynamics in biology is now recognised in population ecology, cardiac rhythm, neuronal firing, immune dynamics, and epidemiology.
Population dynamics
Robert May's 1976 Nature review showed that the logistic map can generate the entire bestiary of dynamical behaviours from simple ecological rules. Real populations rarely follow logistic dynamics, but generalised Lotka-Volterra systems with 3+ species can be chaotic.
Cardiac dynamics
Healthy heart-rate variability has a fractal scaling that has been linked to deterministic chaos. Ventricular fibrillation is sometimes interpreted as a transition to spatiotemporal chaos in the electrical waves traversing the myocardium. Controlling chaos in heart cells is an active research area.
Neurons
Hindmarsh-Rose, FitzHugh-Nagumo, and Izhikevich models all show chaotic firing windows. Real cortical neurons exhibit irregular firing patterns whose deterministic-vs-stochastic balance is still debated.
Epidemics
Seasonally forced SIR-like models exhibit period-doubling and chaos. Olsen and Schaffer (1990) found chaotic patterns in measles incidence; the COVID era brought renewed scrutiny of these models.
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Quick quiz
Test yourself on biology
8 multiple-choice questions. Pick an answer for each, then submit to see explanations.
Q1.May's 1976 review famously used:
Q2.Cardiac fibrillation is sometimes interpreted as:
Q3.Mackey-Glass equation was introduced to model:
Q4.Chaotic dynamics has been claimed in:
Q5.Hindmarsh-Rose models which biological phenomenon?
Q6.Lotka-Volterra dynamics can be chaotic when:
Q7.Glass & Mackey's 'dynamical disease' concept proposed:
Q8.Olsen and Schaffer (1990) found chaotic patterns in: