An immune system model in discrete time based on the analogy with the central nervous system

Jerne's model for the immune system formulated in terms of a neural network recently proposed by Weisbuch and Atlan is generalized to interactions with continuous coupling coefficients. It is shown that even the extended model can be solved analytically without the aid of computer simulations and exhibits one additional attractor, which corresponds to a configuration with high concentrations of active killer cells eventually causing death of the organism.

Abstracts from the CECAM workshop on computer simulations of cellular automata