A new viewpoint and model of neural signal generation and transmission: Signal transmission on unmyelinated neurons
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A new viewpoint and model of neural signal generation and transmission: Signal transmission on unmyelinated neurons Zuoxian Xiang1,2, Chuanxiang Tang2, Chao Chang1 (), and Guozhi Liu2 () 1 2
Innovation Laboratory of Terahertz Biophysics, National Innovation Institute of Defense Technology, Beijing 100071, China Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020 Received: 31 May 2020 / Revised: 21 July 2020 / Accepted: 27 July 2020
ABSTRACT We establish a preliminary model of neural signal generation and transmission based on our previous research, and use this model to study signal transmission on unmyelinated nerves. In our model, the characteristics of neural signals are studied both on a long-time and a short time scale. On the long-time scale, the model is consistent with the circuit model. On the short time scale, the neural system exhibits a THz and infrared electromagnetic oscillation but the energy envelope curve of the rapidly oscillating signal varies slowly. In addition, the numerical method is used to solve the equations of neural signal generation and transmission, and the effects of the temperature on signal transmission are studied. It is found that overly high and overly low temperatures are not conducive to the transmission of neural signals.
KEYWORDS THz, ion channel, neuron signal generation and conduction, unmyelinated neuron
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Introduction
The generation and transmission of neural information is one of the most basic questions in neuroscience. The answer to this question helps the study of many frontier scientific questions such as the origin of human consciousness, the mystery of learning and memory and it also has broad application prospects in many fields such as bionics [1, 2], neural regulation [3–5], artificial intelligence [6–8], neuron disease treatment [9, 10] and so on. Researchers have established a series of models to study the transmission of neural signals and the most widely used models (such as the Hodgkin-Huxley’s model) is based on the assumption of a neuron equivalent circuit [11–14]. However, the physical model based on neuron equivalent circuit has been questioned and some new viewpoint has been put forward [15–18]. Firstly, the time scale of the signal obtained by the model is on the order of ms, the corresponding frequency is in the kHz range, how does the signal of the kHz level meet the needs of the nervous system for a large amount of information transmission and processing? Electromagnetic signals are detected in the kHz range and the skin depth is much larger than the neurological scale. How do different neurons avoid mutual interference? In our previous work, we proposed several conjectures about the generation and transmission of neural signals [19] and discussed neural signal generation and transmission [20–22]. We have calculated that there is a quasi-electrostatic field of the order of MV/m in the nm-scale range on the neuron surface and
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