Electrical Dynamics of the Dendritic Space

Exploration of the role of dendritic geometry in shaping the electric dendritic field of the neuron. With NeuronViewer and user guide.

Sergiy Mikhailovich Korogod (Author), Suzanne Ty?-Dumont (Author)

9780521896771, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 December 2009

224 pages, 3 b/w illus. 14 colour illus.
25.4 x 18 x 1.6 cm, 0.62 kg

'The complex geometry of neuronal dendrites is one of the greatest challenges facing neuroscientists today. Serge Korogod and Suzanne Tyc-Dumont characterize the dendrites as an immense unknown. They have been pioneers in exploring this frontier. In this book they have distilled lifetimes of work by themselves and colleagues in France and the Ukraine to formulate new rules for how the electrical states of dendritic arborizations represent space and time in generating the neural code. In clear language they show how the interactions between these passive and active properties and dendritic geometry create different scales of dynamical dendritic space. New insights are provided into the significance of the dendrites of motoneurons, cerebellar Purkinje cells, and cortical pyramidal neurons. Their models available online give dramatic evidence for these insights. This is a key book for all those interested in dendrites and in the neural basis of cognition and behavior.' Gordon M. Shepherd, Yale University School of Medicine

The authors explain how the whole dendritic arborization contributes to the generation of various output discharges and elucidate the mechanisms of the transfer function of all dendritic sites. Their alternative modelling approach to conventional models introduces the notion of a functional dendritic space, and they have concentrated on a detailed spatial description of the electrical states at all dendritic sites when the dendrites operate. By analyzing the electrical dendritic space in which all the signals are processed, the authors provide tools to explore the spatial dimension of the transient events well known by electrophysiologists. They demonstrate the mechanisms by which the operating dendrites decide how, in fine, the distributed synaptic inputs generate final various output discharges. Their approach reveals the mechanisms by which individual dendritic geometry determines the sequence of action potentials that is the neuronal code. An accompanying NeuronViewer allows readers to monitor the simulation of operating dendritic arborization.

1. Definition of the neuron
2. 3D geometry of dendritic arborizations
3. Basics in bioelectricity
4. The cable theory and the dendrites
5. Voltage transfer over the dendrites
6. Current transfer over dendrites
7. Electrical structure of an artificial dendritic path
8. Electrical structure of a bifurcation
9. Geography of the dendritic space
10. Electrical structures of biological dendrites
11. Electrical structure of the whole arborization
12. Electrical structures in the 3D dendritic space
13. Dendritic space as coder of the temporal output patterns
14. Concluding remarks.

Subject Areas: Neurosciences [PSAN]