7 Synergetic Interpretation of Patterned Vasomotion Activity …
115
blood content and their amplitudes as a measure of variance (i.e. trivially quantitative
aspects of a transport process). Initially, our approach was based on simple pattern
identification (v.i.) allowing to distinguish what we termed “actively modulated” from
what we termed “passively modulated” fluctuation, where the former was considered to be the consequence of constrictor activity at the observation site proper,
and the latter was considered to be the net effect of arterial pressure fluctuations,
respiratory and resistive changes in the entire cardiovascular system. This approach
has indeed proved to be pivotal in overcoming the ideology of pure phenomenological description as it is common in the so-called nonlinear sciences, but proved to
be insufficient in light of the many interacting influences now known (v.i.). More
recently, a sophisticated set of algorithms has been developed in the Department of
Physiology in Aachen (see van den Houten and Grebe) and was applied to hypercomplex neurophysiological data sets obtained in animal experiments at the Free
University of Berlin (Lambert et al.). The programme, meanwhile commercially
available under the trade name SANTIS
® , now permits to identify on strictly objective criteria the cause for the “multidimensionality” of temporally fluctuating records
monitoring the instantaneous movement of red blood cells and the instantaneous red
cell content of the skin (or oral mucosa) under investigation. The various segments of
this communication are presented with the aim of delineating the “logic” behind a set
of monitoring and depicting strategies developed in the last years in the institutions
represented by the authors. The details of the underlying physiological determinants
of fluctuating blood content and blood cell displacement cannot be presented in the
current context, these mechanisms, however, are well known at the molecular and/or
ionic level (Siegel).
7.2 System Analytical Background of Non-invasive
Diagnostical Procedure and its Practical Consequences
in Complex Systems Portrayable as “Quasi-attractors”
In our attempts to uncover the fluctuating “power” of various influencing parameters, we were guided by the systematic work of the late Hans Peter Koepchen, an
internationally known authority on the autonomous nervous system, known for his
penetrating investigations on the interaction between respiration and cardiac activities
(as, for example, it determines systemic arterial pressure in animals and human). In
his cooperation with Hermann Haken, the founder of general synergetics (a transdisciplinary set of theories concerning non-equilibrium phase transitions in dynamically
driven and attenuated systems), these two authors opened a highly fertile approach to
the comprehension of “complexity” in the realm of the autonomic nervous system.
In coining the term “quasi-attractor”, they paraphrased the consequence of a putatively universal performance characteristic of the advanced central nervous systems
(somatic as well as autonomous). There is a simple rule that needs to be applied:
throughout the world of animated biosystems, functionally linked subsystems are
115
blood content and their amplitudes as a measure of variance (i.e. trivially quantitative
aspects of a transport process). Initially, our approach was based on simple pattern
identification (v.i.) allowing to distinguish what we termed “actively modulated” from
what we termed “passively modulated” fluctuation, where the former was considered to be the consequence of constrictor activity at the observation site proper,
and the latter was considered to be the net effect of arterial pressure fluctuations,
respiratory and resistive changes in the entire cardiovascular system. This approach
has indeed proved to be pivotal in overcoming the ideology of pure phenomenological description as it is common in the so-called nonlinear sciences, but proved to
be insufficient in light of the many interacting influences now known (v.i.). More
recently, a sophisticated set of algorithms has been developed in the Department of
Physiology in Aachen (see van den Houten and Grebe) and was applied to hypercomplex neurophysiological data sets obtained in animal experiments at the Free
University of Berlin (Lambert et al.). The programme, meanwhile commercially
available under the trade name SANTIS
® , now permits to identify on strictly objective criteria the cause for the “multidimensionality” of temporally fluctuating records
monitoring the instantaneous movement of red blood cells and the instantaneous red
cell content of the skin (or oral mucosa) under investigation. The various segments of
this communication are presented with the aim of delineating the “logic” behind a set
of monitoring and depicting strategies developed in the last years in the institutions
represented by the authors. The details of the underlying physiological determinants
of fluctuating blood content and blood cell displacement cannot be presented in the
current context, these mechanisms, however, are well known at the molecular and/or
ionic level (Siegel).
7.2 System Analytical Background of Non-invasive
Diagnostical Procedure and its Practical Consequences
in Complex Systems Portrayable as “Quasi-attractors”
In our attempts to uncover the fluctuating “power” of various influencing parameters, we were guided by the systematic work of the late Hans Peter Koepchen, an
internationally known authority on the autonomous nervous system, known for his
penetrating investigations on the interaction between respiration and cardiac activities
(as, for example, it determines systemic arterial pressure in animals and human). In
his cooperation with Hermann Haken, the founder of general synergetics (a transdisciplinary set of theories concerning non-equilibrium phase transitions in dynamically
driven and attenuated systems), these two authors opened a highly fertile approach to
the comprehension of “complexity” in the realm of the autonomic nervous system.
In coining the term “quasi-attractor”, they paraphrased the consequence of a putatively universal performance characteristic of the advanced central nervous systems
(somatic as well as autonomous). There is a simple rule that needs to be applied:
throughout the world of animated biosystems, functionally linked subsystems are