Biophysical Journal 63: 350-365 (1992)
© 1992 the Biophysical Society

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Techniques for obtaining analytical solutions to the multicylinder somatic shunt cable model for passive neurones.

University Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford, United Kingdom.

ABSTRACT

The somatic shunt cable model for neurones is extended to the case in which several equivalent cylinders, not necessarily of the same electrotonic length, emanate from the cell soma. The cable equation is assumed to hold in each cylinder and is solved with sealed end conditions and a lumped soma boundary condition at a common origin. A Green's function (G) is defined, corresponding to the voltage response to an instantaneous current pulse at an arbitrary point along one of the cylinders. An eigenfunction expansion for G is obtained where the coefficients are determined using the calculus of residues and compared with an alternative method of derivation using a modified orthogonality condition. This expansion converges quickly for large time, but, for small time, a more convenient alternative expansion is obtained by Laplace transforms. The voltage response to arbitrary currents injected at arbitrary sites in the dendritic tree (including the soma) may then be expressed as a convolution integral involving G. Illustrative examples are presented for a point charge input.