A synthetic resilience framework for stabilizing dynamical neural networks in neurodegeneration
摘要
Neurodegeneration is essentially a large-scale dynamical instability of brain networks. It has been shown that pathological oscillations, bioenergetic failure, hub degradation, and progressive structural disconnection are manifestations of regulatory control failure rather than isolated cellular pathology. Traditional therapeutic interventions focus on downstream medical or symptomatic outcomes and conventional markers of persistent neural activity, but do not essentially touch the structures and architecture necessitating the arrangement of the system(s). We propose synthetic resilience as a facilitating engineering perspective and address resilience as a controllable dynamical variable, in relation to network topology, oscillatory regulation, and metabolic sufficiency. Based on systems neuroscience, synthetic biology, biohybrid engineering, and control theory, we generalize degeneration changes in neural circuits to leave a bounded stability regime and offer strategies for crossing instability thresholds and restoring contractive dynamics. We discuss underlying malfunctions of the network onset, such as loss of criticality, excitatory-inhibitory imbalance, mitochondrial impairment, and breakdown of antagonizing motifs, and trace by network, these malfunctions onto strategies of network regulation. New components, like synthetic neurotransmission systems, programmable gene circuits, CRISPR-based genomic regulation, neuromorphic biohybrid interfaces, chemogenetic modulation, and adaptive deep brain stimulation, provide mechanistic avenues to stabilize pathological behavior through closed-loop mechanisms. Integration of synaptic reconstruction with principles of adaptive control reframes neurodegeneration as a controllable system-level instability, and it provides a framework for constructing precision neural networks with heterogeneous disease trajectories while acknowledging the practical and ethical limitations of long-term neural regulation.