New technique drawing on echo state networks fills in the gaps to simulate how arrhythmic electrical signals go chaotic

Cardiac arrhythmia results when the usual symphony of electric pulses that keep the heart's muscles in sync becomes chaotic. Although symptoms are often barely noticeable, arrhythmia leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths from unexpected, sudden cardiac arrest in the United States each year. A major issue that limits modeling to predict such events is that it is impossible to measure and monitor all the hundreds of variables that come together to make our hearts tick.