An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding Gastrointestinal Slow Wave Electrophysiology

Abstract

Propulsion of content through the digestive tract is due to the coordinated contractions and relaxations of the smooth muscles in the gut wall. The motility of the gastrointestinal tract is underpinned by an electrophysiological event called slow wave activity. Many other physiological factors, such as neural and hormonal factors, also present a significant level of regulation on both slow waves and motility. In recent years, high-resolution electrical mapping has yielded significant insight to the organization of slow wave activity in-vivo, both in normal as well as pathological conditions. One significant experimental finding has been the description of slow wave dysrhythmias recorded from patients with clinically significant digestive diseases such as diabetic and idiopathic gastroparesis. Accompanying these new findings regarding slow wave activity is a series of mathematical models that have been applied to perform predictive simulations capable of giving further insights to the mechanistic behaviors of slow waves under different physiological conditions. In particular, the multi-scale modeling approach has been utilized to great success to integrate experimental data from multiple recording modalities and infer the relationship between slow waves and gastrointestinal functions. Ultimately, the research efforts aim to develop a ”virtual stomach” for simulation of how food is digested and how different pathological factors can influence digestive health.