Speaker: M. Saleet Jafri, George Mason University

Title: Contraction of the Heart: Insights learned from Deterministic and Stochastic Modeling

Abstract: There is a long history of using mathematics to understand the dynamics of the heart. We have used mathematical models to study the chain of events from electrical excitation and the resulting calcium mobilization from internal stores to force generation. We have found that while many insights have been gained from deterministic modeling, there is at least one phenomena, graded release generation, which requires stochastic models. Graded release is the observation that the amount of calcium mobilized from internal stores is proportional to the amount of calcium entering the cell. Unfortunately, the stochastic models (Monte Carlo simulations) take a day to run versus minutes for the deterministic models. To remedy this we have applied certain mathematical approaches to correctly represent the stochastic system, that are up to 1000 times faster than the Monte Carlo simulations.

Place: Science and Technology Building I, Room 242

Refreshments will be served before the talk at 3:00 p.m. in Room 222.

Department of Mathematical Sciences
George Mason University
4400 University Drive, MS 3F2
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
http://math.gmu.edu/
Tel. 703-993-1460, Fax. 703-993-1491