Section: Research Program

Project team positioning

The main goal of MYCENAE is to address crucial questions arising from both Neuroendocrinology and Neuroscience from a mathematical perspective. The choice and subsequent study of appropriate mathematical formalisms to investigate these dynamics is at the core of MYCENAE's scientific foundations: slow-fast dynamical systems with multiple time scales, mean-field approaches subject to limit-size and stochastic effects, transport-like partial differential equations (PDE) and stochastic individual based models (SIBM).

The scientific positioning of MYCENAE is on the way between Mathematical Biology and Mathematics: we are involved both in the modeling of physiological processes and in the deep mathematical analysis of models, whether they be (i) models developed (or under development) within the team (ii) models developed by collaborating teams or (iii) benchmark models from the literature.

Our research program is grounded on previous results obtained in the framework of the REGATE (REgulation of the GonAdoTropE axis) Large Scale Initiative Action and the SISYPHE project team on the one hand, and the Mathematical Neuroscience Team in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Biology (Collège de France), on the other hand. Several of our research topics are related to the study and generalization of 2 master models: a 4D, multiscale in time, nonlinear model based on coupled FitzHugh-Nagumo dynamics that has proved to be a fruitful basis for the study of the complex oscillations in hypothalamic GnRH dynamics [27], [26], and a $n$D, multiscale in space, system of weakly-coupled non conservative transport equations that underlies our approach of gonadal cell dynamics [28],[8]. Most our topics in mathematical neuroscience deal with the study of complex oscillatory behaviors exhibited either by single neurons or as emergent macroscopic properties of neural networks, from both a deterministic and stochastic viewpoint.