gms | German Medical Science

Aims: The Workshop integrates bio-systems modeling, molecular bio-data methodologies and clinical characterizations with systems engineering perspectives for advancing a holistic understanding of human body’s functional and a person’s behavioral management and control systems and impact from its and her “world outside”.

Key Note Speaker Genetics:

• Prof Dr Zhi-Ying Wu, MD, Director, Research Center of Neurology, 2nd Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China: Genetic Neurology and Clinical Implications.

Key Note Speakers Systems Medicine:

• Prof Dr-Ing Rolf Findeisen, Chair, Systems Theory and Automatic Control, University of Magdeburg: Uncertainty and Robustness in Systems Medicine
• Prof Dr-Ing Dr med Steffen Leonhardt, Philips Chair for Medical Information Technology, RWTH Aachen: Systems Approaches in Medicine from an Engineering Perspective
• Prof Dr phil Dr rer pol Dr med Felix Tretter, 2nd Chairman of the Board, Bayerische Akademie für Suchtfragen in Forschung und Praxis BAS e.V., Munich: Systems Approaches in Medicine from a Clinical Perspective.

Key Note Speakers Theoretical Neurosciences:

• Prof Dr T Leo van Hemmen, Chair, Theoretical Biophysics, Technical University Munich & Editor in Chief, Springer Journal “Biological Cybernetics”: Mathematics and Neuroscience
• Prof Dr Günther Palm, Chair, Neural Information Processing, University of Ulm: Modeling Neural Systems
• Prof Dr med Bernd Weber, Heisenberg Professor, Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of Bonn: Neuroeconomics – From Individual Decision Making to Real World Implications
• Prof Dr Florentin Wörgötter, Chair, Computational Neurosciences, University of Göttingen: Theoretical Models of Brain Function and Their Use for Behavioral Control.

Invited Clinical Topics Speakers:

• Dr med Johannes W Dietrich, Consultant Endocrinologist, Endocrine Research Lab, Bergmannsheil University Hospital Bochum: “Modeling Hormonal Feedback”: Advanced Methodology and Clinical Application
• Prof Dr med Dirk M Hermann, Chair, Vascular Neurology, Dementia and Ageing, University Hospital Essen: “Environmental Impact”: Risk factors and Sub-clinical Markers of Atherosclerosis as Predictors of Stroke in the Population-based Heinz Nixdorf Recall-Study (with co-authors to be announced).

Young Talent Special Session Invited Speakers:

• Dr Jan Ehlers, Department of General Psychology, University of Ulm: Voluntary pupil control: How proximal must control be to be called voluntary? (with Christoph Strauch and Anke Huckauf):

Pupil size is usually regarded as a passive information channel that provides insight into cognitive and affective states but defies any voluntary control. We assume pupil dynamics to be brought under control by strategies of unspecific autonomous activations and applied real-time feedback on diameter changes to enable intentional influence. Participants utilized affective autobiographical associations to voluntarily expand pupil diameter and individually designed relaxation strategies to reduce it. Providing adequate methodological support, all subjects were able to voluntarily increase pupil diameter relative to baseline recordings; albeit with varying degrees of success and over differing durations. Moreover, they improved their performance during one week of training. Parallel recordings of skin conductance responses as a second indicator of sympathetic arousal equally revealed induced activation. However, gradually enabling cognitive control on pupil diameter seems to uncouple the respective dynamics from remaining system activity. The attempt to decrease pupil diameter lead to no significant results, indicating that lowering states of arousal during task processing is achievable only to a limited level. Still, pupil-based communication in Human-Computer Interfaces exceeds affective monitoring and may constitute an active input channel to interfere by means of simple cognitive strategies.

• Dr Nadezda A Vasilyeva, Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics, Moscow State University Lomonosov, and Dokuchaev Soil Science Institute, Department of Soil Physics and Hydrology, Moscow: Modeling microorganism’s growth in multiple feedbacks with soil environment (with Dmitriy A Silaev):

How macro-patterns of living systems behavior arise from dynamics on micro-scale is a crucial phenomenon of self-organization in complex systems. In this study, we mathematically model a soil ecosystem with multiple feedbacks and strongly non-linear behavior. The model includes microorganisms interacting with soil environment, microbial growth and biotic/abiotic/autocatalytic organic matter transformations affected by oxygen, water and capillary pore size. The mathematical model is formulated as a system of parabolic type partial differential equations with the elements of a discrete particles method. It is solved with either linear and non-linear diffusion operator, reflecting different characteristic size of the problem. The energy of external impact on a system is defined by a constant oxygen level on the boundary (opened surface). The system of partial differential equations is solved using second order numerical scheme with iterations of a matrix form of Thomas algorithm, time step auto-selection and accuracy control. To find the auto-oscillating regime of the system, the coefficients were analytically pre-evaluated in a simplified system where the Hopf-bifurcation was found. Then the full system was solved numerically tracking the occurrence of the auto-oscillating regime. It is shown that initially homogeneous distributions of the system parameters evolve into spatially heterogeneous stable dynamical structures. These structures have spatially distributed flashing pattern in time. Non-linearity of oxygen diffusion as opposed to linear process shows possibility of modeling anaerobic micro-zones enabling development of anaerobes (acting as organic matter conservation mechanism in soils). The results visualize the system’s flashing evolution patterns due to interactions between living and organic components in the presence of physical environmental factors. We show the occurrence of auto-oscillating regime and the existence of irregular attractor (in projections of the statistical phase portrait onto 2D subspace) in which basin of attraction the system structures are dynamically stable/self-organized. The model will be used to search for relations between stability of microbial community states and the existence of stable attractors in complex dynamical systems.