Professor of motor control
Department of STAPS
EuroMov, Montpellier University, France
Title:
Fractal properties as a gauge for adaptability and health?
Abstract:
“What is health? The ability to adapt”; so was titled the editorial of a first-ranked medical journal some years ago (Lancet, 2009). If so, then the issue of ad hoc measures of such adaptability appears of acute interest. Complexity measures – typically fractal properties – in the organisms’ observables have been considered a candidate, since evidence for a systematic loss of complexity in the context of several pathologies has been reported. At this stage, however, one may hardly estimate whether an alteration of fractal properties reflects some specific pathophysiological mechanisms, the loss of adaptability associated with such mechanisms, or effective adaptions to maintain a given functional level in spite of impaired conditions. We propose a step towards disentangling the relationship of fractal complexity to adaptability, adaptation, and health/pathology.
Related publication:
– What is health? The ability to adapt [Editorial]. Lancet 2009, 373:781.
– Captur G., Karperien, A.L., Hughes, A.D., et al. (2017). The fractal heart – embracing mathematics in the cardiology clinic. Nat Rev Cardiol, 14(1):56-64.
– Manor, B. & Lipsitz, L.A. (2013). Physiologic Complexity and Aging: Implications for Physical Function and Rehabilitation. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry, 45:287–293.
Biography:
PhD in Human Movement Science in 2008
(Teaching and) research fellow at McMaster University, then Montpellier University, from 2009 to 2011
Lecturer at Montpellier University since 2011, with “Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches” since 2016
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