Antispiral waves cannot occur in the heart: implications for the leading-circle theory of reentry

Recently it was suggested that inwardly propagating antispiral waves may occur in cardiac tissue. To investigate this, we studied antispiral behavior in 2D simulations using a modified FitzHugh-Nagumo model. We showed that antispirals can only occur in a parameter regime in which the system is characterized by oscillatory [as opposed to excitable (action potential)] dynamics. Although such oscillatory behavior can occur in chemical reactions, it is fundamentally different from the excitable behavior of cardiac myocytes. Thus, we conclude that antispirals cannot occur in excitable systems spontaneously, including cardiac tissue. This suggests that leading-circle reentry, a theoretical type of cardiac arrhythmia in which centripetal waves must propagate inwardly, may not be possible in real excitable cardiac tissue.