Computational NeuroSurgery (CNS) Lab & Macquarie Neurosurgery, Macquarie Medical School, Faculty of Medicine, Human and Health Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Adv Neurobiol. 2024;36:141-147. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-47606-8_6.
The introduction of fractal geometry to the neurosciences has been a major paradigm shift over the last decades as it has helped overcome approximations and limitations that occur when Euclidean and reductionist approaches are used to analyze neurons or the entire brain. Fractal geometry allows for quantitative analysis and description of the geometric complexity of the brain, from its single units to the neuronal networks.As illustrated in the second section of this book, fractal analysis provides a quantitative tool for the study of the morphology of brain cells (i.e., neurons and microglia) and its components (e.g., dendritic trees, synapses), as well as the brain structure itself (cortex, functional modules, neuronal networks). The self-similar logic which generates and shapes the different hierarchical systems of the brain and even some structures related to its "container," that is, the cranial sutures on the skull, is widely discussed in the following chapters, with a link between the applications of fractal analysis to the neuroanatomy and basic neurosciences to the clinical applications discussed in the third section.
分形几何在神经科学中的引入是过去几十年中的一个重大范式转变，因为它有助于克服在使用欧几里得和简化方法分析神经元或整个大脑时出现的近似和限制。分形几何允许对大脑的几何复杂性进行定量分析和描述，从单个单元到神经元网络。如本书第二部分所示，分形分析为研究脑细胞（即神经元和小胶质细胞）及其成分（例如树突、突触）以及大脑结构本身（皮质、功能模块、神经元网络）的形态学提供了一种定量工具。产生和塑造大脑不同层次系统的自相似逻辑，甚至与大脑“容器”（即颅骨上的颅缝）相关的一些结构，在以下章节中广泛讨论，分形分析在神经解剖学和基础神经科学中的应用与第三部分中讨论的临床应用之间存在联系。
