Adaptive estimation and control of unstable periodic dynamics in excitable biological systems

Dynamical control of excitable biological systems is often complicated by the difficult and unreliable task of pre-control identification of unstable periodic orbits (UPOs). Here we show that, for both chaotic and nonchaotic systems, UPOs can be located, and their dynamics characterized, during control. Tracking of system nonstationarities emerges naturally from this approach. Such a method is potentially valuable for the control of excitable biological systems, for which pre-control UPO identification is often impractical and nonstationarities (natural or stimulation-induced) are common.