Making sense of life's random rhythms

 Life's random rhythms surround us-from the hypnotic, synchronized blinking of fireflies…to the back-and-forth motion of a child's swing… to slight variations in the otherwise steady lub-dub of the human heart.

But truly understanding those rhythms -- called stochastic, or random, oscillations -- has eluded scientists. While researchers and clinicians have some success in parsing brain waves and heartbeats, they've been unable to compare or catalogue an untold number of variations and sources.

Gaining such insight into the underlying source of oscillations "could lead to advances in neural science, cardiac science and any number of different fields," said Peter Thomas, a professor of applied mathematics at Case Western Reserve University.

Thomas is part of an international team that says it has developed a novel, universal framework for comparing and contrasting oscillations -- regardless of their different underlying mechanisms -- which could become a critical step toward someday fully understanding them.

Their findings were recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We turned the problem of comparing oscillators into a linear algebra problem," Thomas said. "What we have done is vastly more precise than what was available before. It's a major conceptual advance."

The researchers say others can now compare, better understand -- and even manipulate -- oscillators previously considered to have completely different properties.