A carbon nanotube implementation of temporal and spatial dendritic computations

Abstract

A neural dendritic computational circuit design is presented here. The circuit models the result of action potentials applied to biological synapses on a portion of a dendritic tree. The resultant excitatory post synaptic potentials (EPSPs) are combined in a dendritic tree that demonstrates linear, superlinear and sublinear summation of both spatially and temporally separated EPSPs. The synapse circuit models include neurotransmitter action, reuptake and membrane potentials. The output of the circuit is a combined Excitatory Post Synaptic Potential (EPSP). The circuit is simulated using carbon nanotube SPICE models. Variations of this design can be implemented to create a variety of dendritic computational subunits.