Computational Physiology

This open access volume compiles student reports from the 2023 Simula Summer School in Computational Physiology. The reports provide an overview of some tools available to model physiology in excitable tissues across scales and scientific questions. In 2023, Simula held the ninth annual Summer School in Computational Physiology in collaboration with the University of Oslo (UiO) and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Each year, the course focuses on modeling excitable tissues, with a special interest in cardiac physiology and neuroscience. Group research projects conducted by graduate students from around the world result in reports addressing problems of physiological importance. Reports may not necessarily represent new scientific results; rather, they can reproduce or supplement earlier studies. Reports from seven of the summer projects are included as separate chapters. The topics represented include multiscale mechanics, electrophysiology, pharmacology, and machine learning. This is an open access book.

This open access volume compiles student reports from the 2022 Simula Summer School in Computational Physiology. The reports provide an overview of some tools available to model physiology in excitable tissues across scales and scientific questions. In 2022, Simula held the eighth annual Summer School in Computational Physiology in collaboration with the University of Oslo (UiO) and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Each year, the course focuses on modeling excitable tissues, with a special interest in cardiac physiology and neuroscience. Group research projects conducted by graduate students from around the world result in reports addressing problems of physiological importance. Reports may not necessarily represent new scientific results; rather, they can reproduce or supplement earlier studies. Reports from seven of the summer projects are included as separate chapters. The topics represented include multiscale mechanics, electrophysiology, pharmacology, and machine learning.

Mathematical and Computational Methods in Physiology discusses the importance of quantitative description of physiological phenomena and for quantitative comparison of experimental data. An article explains the homeostasis of the body with a focus on the controlling aspects. This section evaluates the concepts of modern physiology and biocybernetics. The canal-ocular reflex and the otolith-ocular reflex in man stimulates eye rotations compensatory for head angular and linear displacements. The book enumerates some modelling and simulation to observe the visual-vestibular interaction during angular and linear body acceleration. A section on the determination of cardiovascular control is given. The text reviews the mathematical models of the biological age of the rat. A numerical simulation of water transport in epithelial junctions is explained comprehensively. A chapter analyzing the computer simulation of drug-receptor interaction is presented. The book will provide useful information to zoologists, doctors, ophthalmologists, students and researchers in the field of medicine.

Stephen Hawking says that the 21st century will be the century of complexity and indeed now systems biology or medicine means dealing with complexity. Both the genome and physiome have emerged in studying complex physiological systems. Computational and mathematical modeling has been regarded as an efficient tool to boost the understanding about living systems in normal or pathophysiological states. Covering applied methodology, basic case studies and complex applications, this volume provides researchers with an overview of modeling and computational studies of physiology (i.e. quantitative physiology), which is becoming an increasingly important branch of systems biology. This book aims to build multi-scale models to investigate functions in living systems and explain how biomolecules, cells, organs, organ systems and organisms carry out the chemical or physical functions. Some of the models addressed are related to gene expression, calcium signalling, neural activity, blood dynamics and bone mechanics. Combining theory and practice, with extensive use of MATLAB, this book is designed to establish a paradigm for quantitative physiology by integrating biology, mathematics, physics and informatics etc. To benefit from this book, the readers are expected to have a background in general physiology and mathematics

The challenge for the biosciences in the twenty-first century is to integrate genome sequencing information into a better understanding of biology, physiology, and human pathology. Such attempts at integration are moving the world toward a new generation of bioscience and bioengineering, where biological, physiological, and pathological information from humans and other living animals can be quantitatively described in silico across multiple scales of time and size and through diverse hierarchies of organization — from molecules to cells and organs, to individuals. To "harness" such complexity, international communities of integrative bioscientists and bioengineers aim to establish frameworks and information infrastructures for describing biological structures and physiological functions on multiple scales of time and space. This textbook includes a public platform to describe physiological functions using mathematical equations and guides the reader to perform mathematical modeling and computer simulations, to combine existing models as well as to create new models. Accessible to biologists, physiologists, and students of the sciences, with illustrative details provided when necessary, this book seeks to achieve a systematic way of harnessing biological complexity. Sharing the databases among communities worldwide will help to find comprehensive answers to all the important questions.

Together, the volumes in this series present all of the data needed at various length scales for a multidisciplinary approach to modeling and simulation of flows in the cardiovascular and ventilatory systems, especially multiscale modeling and coupled simulations. The cardiovascular and respiratory systems are tightly coupled, as their primary function is to supply oxygen to, and remove carbon dioxide from, the body's cells. Because physiological conduits have deformable and reactive walls, macroscopic flow behavior and prediction must be coupled to nano- and microscopic events in a corrector scheme of regulated mechanism. Therefore, investigation of flows of blood and air in physiological conduits requires an understanding of the biology, chemistry, and physics of these systems, together with the mathematical tools to describe their functioning in quantitative terms. The present volume focuses on macroscopic aspects of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems in normal conditions, i.e., anatomy and physiology, as well as the acquisition and processing of medical images and physiological signals.

This volume synthesizes theoretical and practical aspects of both the mathematical and life science viewpoints needed for modeling of the cardiovascular-respiratory system specifically and physiological systems generally. Theoretical points include model design, model complexity and validation in the light of available data, as well as control theory approaches to feedback delay and Kalman filter applications to parameter identification. State of the art approaches using parameter sensitivity are discussed for enhancing model identifiability through joint analysis of model structure and data. Practical examples illustrate model development at various levels of complexity based on given physiological information. The sensitivity-based approaches for examining model identifiability are illustrated by means of specific modeling examples. The themes presented address the current problem of patient-specific model adaptation in the clinical setting, where data is typically limited.