Devil's staircase inside shrimps reveals periodicity of plateau spikes and bursts

Slow-fast dynamics are intrinsically related to complex phenomena, and are responsible for many of the homeostatic dynamics that keep biological systems healthfully functioning. We study a discrete-time membrane potential model that can generate a diverse set of spiking behavior depending on the choice of slow-fast time scales, from fast spiking to bursting, or plateau action potentials – also known as cardiac spikes, since they are characteristic in heart myocytes. The plateau of cardiac spikes may lose stability, generating early or delayed afterdepolarizations (EAD and DAD, respectively), both of which are related to cardiac arrhythmia. We show the periodicity changes along the transition from the healthy action potentials to these impaired spikes. We show that while EADs are mainly periodic attractors, DAD usually comes with chaos. EADs are found inside shrimps – isoperiodic structures of the parameter space. However, in our system, the shrimps have an internal structure made of multiple periodicities, revealing a complete devil’s staircase. Understanding the periodicity of plateau attractors in slow-fast systems could come in handy to unveil the features of heart myocytes behavior that are linked to cardiac arrhythmias.