title: Neurological Diseases from a Systems Medicine Point of View.
abstract: The difficulty to understand, diagnose, and treat neurological disorders stems from the great complexity of the central nervous system on different levels of physiological granularity. The individual components, their interactions, and dynamics involved in brain development and function can be represented as molecular, cellular, or functional networks, where diseases are perturbations of networks. These networks can become a useful research tool in investigating neurological disorders if they are properly tailored to reflect corresponding mechanisms. Here, we review approaches to construct networks specific for neurological disorders describing disease-related pathology on different scales: the molecular, cellular, and brain level. We also briefly discuss cross-scale network analysis as a necessary integrator of these scales.
authors.affiliation: Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB), Université du Luxembourg, 7, Avenue des Hauts-Fourneaux, L-4362, Esch-Belval, Luxembourg.
authors.forename: Marek
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ostaszewski
authors.affiliation: Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB), Université du Luxembourg, 7, Avenue des Hauts-Fourneaux, L-4362, Esch-Belval, Luxembourg.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Skupin
authors.affiliation: Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB), Université du Luxembourg, 7, Avenue des Hauts-Fourneaux, L-4362, Esch-Belval, Luxembourg. Rudi.Balling@uni.lu.
authors.forename: Rudi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Balling
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D009422:Nervous System Diseases / Q000209:etiology / Q000378:metabolism / Q000503:physiopathology; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000379:methods
keywords: Cellular networks; Connectome; Cross-scale analysis; Epilepsies; Molecular networks; Multiscale brain networks; Network reconstruction; Neurodegenerative diseases; Systems medicine