Speaker
Description
Adult Neurogenesis is the generation of neurons from neural stem cells after the juvenile development is completed. It is essential for the upkeep of cognitive functions and for reaction to injuries. To protect the cells from depletion and mutations, the cells cycle between dividing and non-dividing (quiescent) states. It has been seen experimentally that the quiescent cells are heterogeneous and exist on a continuum of quiescent depths.
An established framework to model cell populations is by a compartmental model using ODEs. Here, heterogeneity of the cells can be included by dividing the cells into many compartments that can have different evolution and interaction dynamics. Investigating the limit where heterogeneity becomes continuous, a structured model based on quiescence depth arises through parameter rescaling.
Even though the limit of the ODE system solves the structured model, the densities of the ODEs embedded in the state space of the structured model differ from the solutions of the structured model. Similar effects have been seen before. We explore this effect and the reasons for the limited comparability between the models. This will allow us to understand in which cases it is a suitable approximation to use established methods for compartmental models, e.g. for efficient parameter estimation and numerical simulations to learn about the structured models.
