Deterministic control of mean alignment and elongation of neuron-like cells by grating geometry: a computational approach

Sergi, Pier Nicola; Marino, Attilio; Ciofani, Gianni

doi:10.1039/c5ib00045a

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Therefore, fascicles innervating proximal structures seem to be exposed to a greater lateral contraction within the portion of nerve running close to these structures. The presented model could be also integrated, in future studies, to other models accounting for the ability of the nervous tissue to regenerate [35][36][37][38][39][40] to better explore the connection between engineered biomaterials and the neural tissue.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Quantitative Investigation on the Peripheral Nerve Response within the Small Strain Range

et al. 2019

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Peripheral nerves are very complex biological structures crucial to linking the central nervous system to the periphery of the body. However, their real behaviour is partially unknown because of the intrinsic difficulty of studying these structures in vivo. As a consequence, theoretical and computational tools together with in vitro experiments are widely used to approximate the mechanical response of the peripheral nervous tissue to different kind of solicitations. More specifically, particular conditions narrow the mechanical response of peripheral nerves within the small strain regime. Therefore, in this work, the mechanical response of nerves was investigated through the study of the relationships among strain, stress and displacements within the small strain range. Theoretical predictions were quantitatively compared to experimental evidences, while the displacement field was studied for different values of the tissue compressibility. This framework provided a straightforward computational assessment of the nerve response, which was needed to design suitable connections to biomaterials or neural interfaces within the small strain range.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Quantitative Investigation on the Peripheral Nerve Response within the Small Strain Range

et al. 2019

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“…In addition, it could be also useful, in synergy with more complex models, to achieve precise initial guess to calibrate heavy computational models (as patient specific models) or the interaction between peripheral nerves and neural interfaces [5]. The provided approach, could be also used to infer information to enhance more specific regenerative models [6,27,29,32,33] accounting for the presence of regenerating axons or bundles [15]. Finally, the presented framework, exploiting a "continuum mechanics approach", may be coupled with enhanced researches [21,23] aiming at combining in-vitro, in-vivo and in-human studies to investigate the ef-Fast in silico assessment of physical stress for peripheral nerves 13 fects of the surrounding environment (e.g., provided by artificial nerve-guides) on the nerve regeneration in peripheral nerve-gap lesions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast in silico assessment of physical stress for peripheral nerves

Giannessi

Stornelli

Sergi

2018

Med Biol Eng Comput

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The level of physical stress rules the adaptative response of peripheral nerves, which is crucial to assess their physiological and pathological states. To this aim, in this work, different computational approaches were presented to model the stress response of in vitro peripheral nerves undergoing longitudinal stretch. More specifically, the effects of geometrical simplifications were studied with respect to the amount of computational time needed to obtain relevant information. Similarly, the variation of compressibility of the peripheral nervous tissue was investigated with respect to the variation of longitudinal stress and transversal stretch variations, and with reference to the computational time needed for simulations. Finally, the effect of small dimensional changes was investigated to better understand whether the variation of time was only due to the amount of nodes or elements. In conclusion, since fast in silico models, able to assess the nerve stress, could be a strategic advantage in case of time constraints or on-line evaluation (e.g., surgical interventions), a synergistic use of these approaches was proposed as a possible strategy to decrease the computational time needed for simulations from minutes to seconds. Graphical Abstract A synergistic approach involving both symmetry and tuning of compressibility allows the computational time to be considerably decreased.

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“…Literature studies on neural-like ( Ciofani et al, 2011 ; Sergi et al, 2013 ; Sergi, Marino & Ciofani, 2015 ) or neural cells ( Roccasalvo, Micera & Sergi, 2015 ) investigated the behaviour of single cells in topographical and chemical active environments ( Sergi & Cavalcanti-Adam, 2017 ). Nevertheless, this approach could be effective to study the regeneration of peripheral nerves during the first phases, when axons grow separately.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A unified approach to model peripheral nerves across different animal species

Giannessi

Stornelli

Sergi

2017

PeerJ

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Peripheral nerves are extremely complex biological structures. The knowledge of their response to stretch is crucial to better understand physiological and pathological states (e.g., due to overstretch). Since their mechanical response is deterministically related to the nature of the external stimuli, theoretical and computational tools were used to investigate their behaviour. In this work, a Yeoh-like polynomial strain energy function was used to reproduce the response of in vitro porcine nerve. Moreover, this approach was applied to different nervous structures coming from different animal species (rabbit, lobster, Aplysia) and tested for different amount of stretch (up to extreme ones). Starting from this theoretical background, in silico models of both porcine nerves and cerebro-abdominal connective of Aplysia were built to reproduce experimental data (R2 > 0.9). Finally, bi-dimensional in silico models were provided to reduce computational time of more than 90% with respect to the performances of fully three-dimensional models.

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Deterministic control of mean alignment and elongation of neuron-like cells by grating geometry: a computational approach

Cited by 16 publications

References 36 publications

A Quantitative Investigation on the Peripheral Nerve Response within the Small Strain Range

A Quantitative Investigation on the Peripheral Nerve Response within the Small Strain Range

Fast in silico assessment of physical stress for peripheral nerves

A unified approach to model peripheral nerves across different animal species

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