Computational Modeling of Neural Circuit-Like Coupled Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reactions A thesis presented to the Interdepartmental Program in Neuroscience. Graduate School of Arts and Science Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts By Alexander Mitchell We seek to adapt simplified circuit models of neural central pattern generators (CPGs) for use in a system of chemical oscillators using the B...

We present a method that is capable of implementing information transfer without any rigidly controlled architecture using the light-sensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction system. Chemical wave fragments are injected into a subexcitable area and their collisions result in annihilation, fusion or quasielastic interactions depending on their initial positions. The fragments of excitation bo...

The occurrence of spatial domains of large amplitude oscillation on a background of small amplitude oscillation in a reaction–diffusion system is called localization. We study, analytically and numerically, the mechanism of localization in a model of the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction subject to global feedback. This behavior is found to arise from the canard phenomenon, in which a limit cycle s...

In this paper we describe a technique of encoding and then decoding symbol sequences containing information into chaotic oscillations of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. The encoding technique is based on controlling the chaotic oscillations by applying small parameter perturbations and on learning the grammar of corresponding symbol dynamics produced by the free-running chaotic system. The u...

Experiments with the 1,4-cyclohexanedione Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction demonstrate that three-dimensional scroll waves can rotate around filaments that end in the wake of a traveling excitation pulse. The vortex structures nucleate during the collision of three nonrotating excitation pulses. The nucleation process and the wave-termination of filaments are direct consequences of the system's an...

We found a rotating global structure induced by the dynamical force of local chemical activity in a thin solution layer of excitable Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction coupled with diffusion. The surface flow and deformation associated with chemical spiral waves (wavelength about 1 mm) represents a global unidirectional structure and a global tilt in the entire Petri dish (100 mm in diameter), respe...

The field of self-organization in nonequilibrium chemical systems comprises the study of dynamical phenomena in chemically reacting systems far from equilibrium. Systematic exploration of this area began with investigations of the temporal behavior of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky oscillating reaction, discovered accidentally in the former Soviet Union in the 1950s. The field soon advanced into chem...

Several reaction-diffusion systems that exhibit temporal periodicity when well mixed also display spatio-temporal pattern formation in a spatially distributed, unstirred configuration. These patterns can be travelling (e.g. spirals, concentric circles, plane waves) or stationary in space (Turing structures, standing waves). The behaviour of coupled and forced temporal oscillators has been well ...

We present a theoretical analysis of stacking and destacking wave trains in excitable reaction-diffusion systems with anomalous velocity-wavelength dependence. For linearized dispersion relations, kinematic analysis yields an analytical function that rigorously describes front trajectories. The corresponding accelerations have exactly one extremum that slowly decays with increasing pulse number...