Control of cardiac alternans in a mapping model with memory

Abstract We investigate a map-based model of paced cardiac muscle in the presence of closed-loop feedback control. The model relates the duration of an action potential to the preceding diastolic interval as well as the preceding action potential duration and thus has some amount of ‘memory.’ We find that the domain of control depends on this memory, independently of the specific functional form of the map. The memory-dependent domain of control can encompass large feedback gains, thus providing the first possible explanation of the recent experimental results of Hall et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett, 88, 198102 (2002)] on controlling alternans in small pieces of rapidly-paced cardiac muscle.