0000000000143562

AUTHOR

Francesco Guerra

showing 3 related works from this author

Anergy in self-directed B lymphocytes from a statistical mechanics perspective

2012

The ability of the adaptive immune system to discriminate between self and non-self mainly stems from the ontogenic clonal-deletion of lymphocytes expressing strong binding affinity with self-peptides. However, some self-directed lymphocytes may evade selection and still be harmless due to a mechanism called clonal anergy. As for B lymphocytes, two major explanations for anergy developed over three decades: according to "Varela theory", it stems from a proper orchestration of the whole B-repertoire, in such a way that self-reactive clones, due to intensive interactions and feed-back from other clones, display more inertia to mount a response. On the other hand, according to the `two-signal …

Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)FOS: Biological sciencesCell Behavior (q-bio.CB)FOS: Physical sciencesQuantitative Biology - Cell BehaviorDisordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn)Physics - Biological PhysicsCondensed Matter - Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
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Can persistent Epstein-Barr virus infection induce Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as a Pavlov reflex of the immune response?

2012

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a protracted illness condition (lasting even years) appearing with strong flu symptoms and systemic defiances by the immune system. Here, by means of statistical mechanics techniques, we study the most widely accepted picture for its genesis, namely a persistent acute mononucleosis infection, and we show how such infection may drive the immune system toward an out-of-equilibrium metastable state displaying chronic activation of both humoral and cellular responses (a state of full inflammation without a direct "causes-effect" reason). By exploiting a bridge with a neural scenario, we mirror killer lymphocytes $T_K$ and $B$ cells to neurons and helper lymphocytes $…

Cytotoxicity ImmunologicEpstein-Barr Virus InfectionsHerpesvirus 4 HumanMononucleosisT-LymphocytesFOS: Physical sciencesInflammationBiologyVirusimmunologyImmune systemAntigenEpstein-Barr Virus InfectionCell Behavior (q-bio.CB)medicineChronic fatigue syndromeHumansimmunology; statistical mechanicsEpstein–Barr virus infectionEcology Evolution Behavior and SystematicsCondensed Matter - Statistical MechanicsB-LymphocytesFatigue Syndrome ChronicEcologyStatistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)B-LymphocyteImmunitymedicine.diseasePhysics - Medical PhysicsFOS: Biological sciencesImmunologyReflexQuantitative Biology - Cell Behaviorstatistical mechanicsMedical Physics (physics.med-ph)medicine.symptomImmunologic MemoryHuman
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Multitasking associative networks.

2012

We introduce a bipartite, diluted and frustrated, network as a sparse restricted Boltzman machine and we show its thermodynamical equivalence to an associative working memory able to retrieve multiple patterns in parallel without falling into spurious states typical of classical neural networks. We focus on systems processing in parallel a finite (up to logarithmic growth in the volume) amount of patterns, mirroring the low-level storage of standard Amit-Gutfreund-Sompolinsky theory. Results obtained trough statistical mechanics, signal-to-noise technique and Monte Carlo simulations are overall in perfect agreement and carry interesting biological insights. Indeed, these associative network…

NeuronsRestricted Boltzmann machineTheoretical computer scienceArtificial neural networkComputer scienceMonte Carlo methodComplex systemGeneral Physics and AstronomyFOS: Physical sciencesStatistical mechanicsDisordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn)Condensed Matter - Disordered Systems and Neural NetworksPhysics and Astronomy (all)Human multitaskingNeural Networks ComputerNerve NetEquivalence (measure theory)Associative propertyPhysical review letters
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