The tongue as an excitable medium
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-eq...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IOP Publishing
2015-01-01
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| Series: | New Journal of Physics |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/17/3/033049 |
| _version_ | 1797751100968796160 |
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| author | Gabriel Seiden Sofia Curland |
| author_facet | Gabriel Seiden Sofia Curland |
| author_sort | Gabriel Seiden |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | 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, chemically driven reaction-diffusion systems and morphogenesis in multicellular organisms. Here we identify GT as a novel example of excitable media dynamics and explore the evolution of the condition from a dynamical systems perspective. We focus on two characteristic aspects of GT in particular: anisotropic expansion of lesions and re-entry of the inflammation into recovering regions. Our investigation sheds light on the evolution of the inflammation and suggests a practical way to classify the severity of the condition, based on the characteristic patterns observed in GT patients. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T16:43:32Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-6f7264e8a0b540469fe1849ff505c40f |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1367-2630 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T16:43:32Z |
| publishDate | 2015-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | New Journal of Physics |
| spelling | doaj.art-6f7264e8a0b540469fe1849ff505c40f2023-08-08T14:20:52ZengIOP PublishingNew Journal of Physics1367-26302015-01-0117303304910.1088/1367-2630/17/3/033049The tongue as an excitable mediumGabriel Seiden0Sofia Curland1Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel; Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Nöthnitzer Str. 38, D-01187 Dresden, GermanyDepartment of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, IsraelGeographic 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, chemically driven reaction-diffusion systems and morphogenesis in multicellular organisms. Here we identify GT as a novel example of excitable media dynamics and explore the evolution of the condition from a dynamical systems perspective. We focus on two characteristic aspects of GT in particular: anisotropic expansion of lesions and re-entry of the inflammation into recovering regions. Our investigation sheds light on the evolution of the inflammation and suggests a practical way to classify the severity of the condition, based on the characteristic patterns observed in GT patients.https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/17/3/033049excitable mediapattern formationdisease modelingcellular automata |
| spellingShingle | Gabriel Seiden Sofia Curland The tongue as an excitable medium New Journal of Physics excitable media pattern formation disease modeling cellular automata |
| title | The tongue as an excitable medium |
| title_full | The tongue as an excitable medium |
| title_fullStr | The tongue as an excitable medium |
| title_full_unstemmed | The tongue as an excitable medium |
| title_short | The tongue as an excitable medium |
| title_sort | tongue as an excitable medium |
| topic | excitable media pattern formation disease modeling cellular automata |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/17/3/033049 |
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