Berlin 2015 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 44: Pattern Formation
DY 44.8: Talk
Thursday, March 19, 2015, 11:30–11:45, BH-N 333
The tongue as an excitable medium — •Gabriel Seiden1,2 and Sofia Curland2 — 1Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden 01187 — 2Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel
Geographic tongue (GT) is a medical condition affecting approximately 2% of the population, whereby the papillae covering the upper part of the tongue are lost due to a slowly expanding inflammation. The resultant dynamical appearance of the tongue has striking similarities with well known out-of equilibrium phenomena observed in excitable media, such as forest fires, cardiac dynamics and chemically driven reaction-diffusion systems. We explore the dynamics associated with GT from a dynamical systems perspective, utilizing cellular automata simulations. Our results shed light on the evolution of the inflammation and suggest a practical way to classify the severity of the condition, based on the characteristic patterns observed in GT patients.