Spatial and Temporal Resolution

[BrainAnnex]

Dynamically adjusting Spatial and Temporal resolution of the simulations is a project goal from early on.

For the discrete spatial compartments, this project will always use the term "bin" rather than "cell", to avoid confusion with biological cells and their models.

Let's say we have several chemical species that are in near-equilibrium, both in terms of diffusion and reactivity... and then we have other species that - in some locations and some time periods - have highly variable concentration rates, perhaps because they're produced or consumed in reactions...

Do we really want to waste a lot of high resolution and computing power on the species, locations, time periods that are near-equilibrium? Conversely, do we want to only coarsely simulate the highly dynamic species/locations/time periods?

Biology informs us that there's quite a range of time scales: for example, impulse firing in neurons is of the order of milliseconds... while DNA replication is of the order of a hour. Many orders of magnitude!

Broadly speaking, the optimal size of the bins is most likely dictated by the variability in the concentration of the various chemical species in them, and the rates at which they react.