Modeling the Electrophysiology of Jellyfish with the FitzHugh-Nagumo Equations (2013)

Undergraduate: Roger Fan

Faculty Advisor: Laura Miller
Department: Mathematics

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The aim of this study is to model the principal features of jellyfish electrophysiology. The FitzHugh-Nagumo equations are used to describe travelling action potentials while van der Pol oscillators represent pacemakers. This model demonstrates some of the phenomena observed in the electrophysiology of jellyfish. The parameters have been tuned so that the action potentials have similar velocity and duration. An emergent property of this model is that pacemakers of distinct natural frequencies interact and adopt a similar frequency.