"We investigate the effects of the stochastic nature of ion channels on the faithfulness, precision and reproducibility of electrical signal transmission in weakly active, dendritic membrane under in vitro conditions. ... We numerically simulate the effects of stochastic ion channels on the forward and backward propagation of dendritic spikes in Monte-Carlo simulations on a reconstructed layer 5 pyramidal neuron. We report that in most instances there is little variation in timing or amplitude for a single BPAP, while variable backpropagation can occur for trains of action potentials. Additionally, we find that the generation and forward propagation of dendritic Ca2+ spikes are susceptible to channel variability. This indicates limitations on computations that depend on the precise timing of Ca2+ spikes."
Model Type: Channel/Receptor
Region(s) or Organism(s): Neocortex
Model Concept(s): Active Dendrites; Action Potentials
Simulation Environment: NEURON
Implementer(s): Diba, Kamran [diba at andromeda.rutgers.edu]
References:
Diba K, Koch C, Segev I. (2006). Spike propagation in dendrites with stochastic ion channels. Journal of computational neuroscience. 20 [PubMed]