An inhomogeneous Kaluza-Klein compactification to four dimensions, followed by a conformal transformation, results in a system with position dependent mass (PDM). This origin of a PDM is quite different from the condensed matter one. A substantial generalization of a previously studied nonlinear oscillator with variable mass is obtained, wherein the position dependence of the mass of a nonrelativistic particle is due to a dilatonic coupling function emerging from the extra dimension. Previously obtained solutions for such systems can be extended and reinterpreted as nonrelativistic particles interacting with dilaton fields, which, themselves, can have interesting structures. An application is presented for the nonlinear oscillator, where within the new scenario the particle is coupled to a dilatonic string.
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