The New Field of Network Physiology: Mapping the Human Physiolome*

The human organism is an integrated network where complex physiological systems continuously interact to optimize and coordinate their function. Organ-to-organ interactions occur at multiple levels and spatiotemporal scales to produce distinct physiologic states. Disrupting organ communications can lead to dysfunction of individual systems or to collapse of the entire organism. Yet, we do not know the nature of interactions among systems and sub-systems, and their collective role as a network in maintaining health. The new field of Network Physiology aims to address these fundamental questions.

Through the prism of concepts and approaches from statistical and computational physics and nonlinear dynamics, we will present a new framework to identify and quantify dynamic networks of organ interactions. We will demonstrate how physiologic network topology and systems connectivity lead to integrated global behaviors representative of distinct states and functions.

The presented investigations are initial steps in building a first Atlas of dynamic interactions among organ systems and the Human Physiolome, a new kind of BigData of blue-print reference maps that uniquely represent physiologic states and functions under health and disease.