Supplement for bmm1409

Two demonstration animations

Educators are recommended to install NEURON to run live demos in their classroom in place of these animation examples, as occasionally a question will arise that can be answered by further manipulations of the simulator.

These demonstrations compare two CA3 pyramidal cells similarities and differences in their bursting behavior. The cells have a similar membrane voltage trajectory in their soma and a different pattern in their dendritic arbor during the burst. Each animation includes a time varying instantaneous membrane voltage graph chosen from an arbitrary but representative path through the neuron from a tip of a basal dendrite through the soma to the tip of an apical dendrite, a graph of the membrane voltage at the soma, and a graph of color coded time varying voltage throughout the cell.

Opening either of below files in a web browser will automatically start the gif animations:

ca3_1995.png

Movie 1: ca3_1995.gif - The dendrites follow a damped version of the soma's voltage trajectory (click here for viewing).

 

Movie 2: ca3_2002.gif -- The dendrites independently propagate and generate spikes in a dynamic interaction with the soma's voltage trajectory (click here for viewing).

It is possible that future electrophysiological (especially optical) experiments will find evidence that supports either one or both of these models (both models may be supported if in vivo recordings show similar patterns to the distinct patterns the two models generate can be obtained at separate times in the same CA3 cell or in different CA3 cells).