Supporting online materials for Huang et al., 2004

The first three movies below were taken from the same slice, and the fourth movie was taken from another slice with higher spatial resolution. In each movie the bottom trace shows the signal on one optical detector (location marked by the small box in the image). The small red square sliding on the bottom trace indicates the time of the current image of the movie. The fifth movie is a model movie.

Spirals occurred in the whole period of about 2,300 ms of oscillations (24 cycles). Each oscillation cycle is associated with one rotation of the spiral. The bottom trace shows amplitude reduction when the spiral center drifts into the detector. The slice is about 8 x 6 mm and the image field is 4 mm in diameter covering the center of the slice.

This movie was taken about 20 min after movie 1 from the same field of view. In the movie there are 20 cycles of oscillations, all organized as plane waves travelling from the bottom right to the top left of the field.

This movie was taken 300 ms before the spiral period shown in Movie 1. At the beginning there are multiple waves colliding in the field. Then there are unstable rotations and plane waves.

This movie was imaged with higher spatial resolution by the 25 x 25 array. At the beginning 4 cycles of ring waves start at the lower right of the field of view. At the 4th cycle the ring wave collides with another wave and develops into spiral waves.

This movie shows the creation and subsequent drift of a spiral wave in the model. At the beginning a plane wave is initiated at the left end of the field. After the wave forming, an inhibitory stimulus is applied where the wave meets the boundary of the medium, creating a free end of sufficiently high curvature to initiate rotation and form a spiral. At the beginning of the movie the spiral tip rotates around position (a). However, as the spiral drifts the tip is seen to rotate around position (c) by the end of the movie. The same spiral initiation method created spirals in homogeneous and mildly inhomogeneous coupling conditions.