Julian Garcia Grajales

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  Short Talk: Mechanical modeling of neurites
  Julian Garcia Grajales

  Computational Neuron Mechanics appears as a new multidisciplinary _eld potentially able to study medical challenges such as Alzheimer's disease, tumor growth/migration or traumatic brain injury at cell level. Although computational modeling has been widely used in di_erent Neuroscience applications, the tremendous importance of the interactions between the neuron and its surrounding media/stimulus have been rarely explored. Aimed at analyzing these inter- actions, this work proposes a new multiscale computational framework particularized for two representative scenarios: axonal growth and electrophysiological-mechanical coupling of neu- rites. In the former, the intertwined relation between a biochemical stimulus and the mechanical properties of axons is studied, whereas in the latter, the functional impairments of neurites as a consequence of mechanical constraints are explored. To accomplish these objectives, we de- vise a large scale parallel _nite di_erence program, called Neurite, with the necessary exibility and versatility to implement biological models. In the case of the axonal growth, the program was adapted to simulate microtubule polymerization providing axon mechanical properties as a function of its microtubule occupancy. For the electrophysiological-mechanical coupling case, Neurite was used to relate macroscopic mechanical loading to microscopic strains and strain rates, and to simulate electrical signal propagation along neurites under mechanical loading. For both cases, the models were calibrated against experimental results available in the litera- ture. The growth model showed dramatic variations in the mechanical properties at the tip of the axon, whereas the electrophysiological-mechanical model represents a novelty for predicting the alteration of neuronal electrophysiological function under mechanical loading, thus linking mechanical traumas to subsequent acute functional de_cits.