Hypergraph modeling of complex interactions: Applications from human musculoskeletal structures to complex system dynamics.

Abstract

The musculoskeletal network is a complex system of different types of nodes and edges interacting with each other. Although there is a wealth of knowledge about the anatomical components of the human body and the connections between them, the interdependence of these components as a system remains largely unexplored. This study aims to understand the structure of musculoskeletal networks by using hypergraphs as a model of the musculoskeletal system with many-to-many connections. We used both pairwise and hypergraph-based embedding methods to learn the connectivity of muscles. Experiments demonstrated the superiority of the proposed hypergraph-based method over pairwise methods in distinguishing the specific roles of the muscles connecting different body parts.