Agent-based Exploration of Wirings of Biological Neural Networks: Position Paper
This is an incremental position paper that discusses a potential method for researchers in neuroscience and medical fields to simulate and explore neural networks.
The paper addresses the challenge of understanding biological neural wiring by proposing agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) as a tool to integrate existing data and generate hypotheses for future experiments.
The understanding of human central nervous system depends on knowledge of its wiring. However, there are still gaps in our understanding of its wiring due to technical difficulties. While some information is coming out from human experiments, medical research is lacking of simulation models to put current findings together to obtain the global picture and to predict hypotheses to lead future experiments. Agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) is a strong candidate for the simulation model. In this position paper, we discuss the current status of "neural wiring" and "ABMS in biological systems". In particular, we discuss that the ABMS context provides features required for exploration of biological neural wiring.