A computational investigation of electrotonic coupling between pyramidal cells in the cortex
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A computational investigation of electrotonic coupling between pyramidal cells in the cortex Jennifer Crodelle1
· Douglas Zhou2 · Gregor Kovaˇciˇc3 · David Cai2,4
Received: 22 October 2019 / Revised: 17 July 2020 / Accepted: 4 August 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The existence of electrical communication among pyramidal cells (PCs) in the adult cortex has been debated by neuroscientists for several decades. Gap junctions (GJs) among cortical interneurons have been well documented experimentally and their functional roles have been proposed by both computational neuroscientists and experimentalists alike. Experimental evidence for similar junctions among pyramidal cells in the cortex, however, has remained elusive due to the apparent rarity of these couplings among neurons. In this work, we develop a neuronal network model that includes observed probabilities and strengths of electrotonic coupling between PCs and gap-junction coupling among interneurons, in addition to realistic synaptic connectivity among both populations. We use this network model to investigate the effect of electrotonic coupling between PCs on network behavior with the goal of theoretically addressing this controversy of existence and purpose of electrotonically coupled PCs in the cortex. Keywords Neuronal networks · Hodgkin-Huxley model · Gap junctions · Pyramidal cells
1 Introduction Electrical communication between pyramidal cells (PCs) in the mammalian cortex has been of interest to neuroscientists for many years. During the early stages of development, PCs are coupled by electrical junctions (EJs) with decreasing degrees of connectivity over the first few postnatal weeks (Niculescu and Lohmann 2013; Yong-Chun et al. 2012).
Action Editor: Maxim Bazhenov Douglas Zhou
[email protected] Jennifer Crodelle [email protected] 1
Department of Mathematics, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, USA
2
School of Mathematical Sciences, MOE-LSC, and Institute of Natural Sciences, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
3
Department of Mathematics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA
4
Courant Institute of Mathematical Science, New York, NY, USA
Experiments have shown that blocking these junctions during embryonic stages of development disrupts the final placement of neurons in the adult cortex, suggesting a role for EJs during development in neuron migration. These experiments on development in rodents report no EJs present in the cortex past the first postnatal week; however, two experimental labs have recently measured the properties of EJs between PCs in the adult cortex (Wang et al. 2010; Mercer et al. 2006). Mercer et al. (2006) discovered one pair of EJ-coupled PCs in the rat neocortex, while Wang et al. (2010) measured ten EJcoupled pairs of PCs in the prefrontal and visual cortices of rats and ferrets. The protein that might form this electrotonic connection remains unknown, making further experimental investigation difficult (Wang et al. 2010). Additionally
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