Control systems analysis of parallel networked cardiac control

This proposal is for the mathematical modeling and analysis of networked neural control of blood pumped from the heart into an elastic arterial tree. Experimental studies show that neural networks outside the central nervous system are important to integrate feedback from the heart and elastic arterial tree with information from the central nervous system. Experiments intended to examine such a system are difficult to design and therefore mathematical models serve both as an experimental design tool and as a means to interpret measured data.An exciting aspect of this work is that these mathematical models for networked cardiac control can also be used to study simultaneous `aging' of both the neural network and the arterial tree. This `aging' is of clinical significance to expand our understanding of pathways through which pathologies such as essential hypertension (a small, unexplained rise in blood pressure) and cardiac arrhythmias emerge. This increased understanding will ultimately impact the way that clinicians think about cardiac disease and aid in the evolution of treatments of pathology that include a neural component.