Glucose-induced period-doubling cascade in the electrical activity of pancreatic \(\beta\)-cells (Q1284016)

The membrane potential of pancreatic \(\beta\)-cells may experience a transition from periods of rapid spike-like oscillations alternating with a pseudo-steady state to spike-only oscillations. The author studies the mathematical structure which underlies this transitional stage in a pancreatic \(\beta\)-cell model. It is proved that the transition can be chaotic but becomes more and more regular with increase in glucose. The transition interval in glucose concentration is extremely small in terms of the rate of change of the calcium dynamics in the \(\beta\)-cells. The methods are based on the theory of unimodal maps and geometric and asymptotic theories of singular perturbation.