Scaling behaviors in physiological fluctuations: relevance to circadian regulation and insights into the development of Alzheimer’s disease

This talk will be presented online. Zoom link: 997 8258 4700 (pw: 1234)

Abstract: Outputs from health biological systems display complex fluctuations that are not random but display robust and often self-similar (fractal) temporal correlations at different time scales— scaling behaviors. The scaling behaviors in the fluctuations of biological outputs such as neural activities, cardiac dynamics, motor activity are believed to be originated from feedbacks within the complex biological networks, reflecting the system adaptability to internal and external inputs. Supporting this concept, our studies have demonstrated a mechanistic link between the scaling regulation of physiological fluctuations and the circadian control system— a result of evolutionary adaptation to daily environmental light-dark cycles on the earth. In this talk, I will discuss certain evidence for this ‘scaling-circadian’ link and its related implications. Moreover, I will review some recent studies, in which we examined how the scaling patterns of human motor activity fluctuations change with aging and in Alzheimer’s disease. Our results showed that (1) alterations in scaling activity patterns occur before the clinical manifestation of Alzheimer’s disease (i.e., cognitive impairment) and predict cognitive decline and the risk for Alzheimer’s dementia; and (2) the progression of Alzheimer’s disease accelerates the aging effect on the scaling activity patterns. Our work provides strong evidence that altered scaling activity patterns may also be a risk factor for neurodegeneration, playing a role in the development and progression of Alzheimer’s disease.