Spatio-temporal patterns of electrical activity over the heart cause the muscle to contract. This workshop considered the electrical activity of the heart, and the resulting mechanical events, in both health and disease. It also reviewed current understanding and modeling of drug action. Simplified models of the electrical activity show normal wave propagation, as well as arrhythmias such as spontaneous spiral wave generation. Complicating factors for electrical and mechanical modelers include differing nonlinear properties in different regions, anisotropy in the conduction pathways and in the fiber architecture of the heart, and branching in the Purkinje system which triggers the muscle electrical activity. Large scale 3-D computational models for electrical and mechanical activity of the heart as well as reduced electrical models based on singular perturbation descriptions and kinematics of spiral cores have led to insights into cardiac physiology, and for excitable media more generally.

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