Effect of DC Stimuli on Neuronal Dynamics

Abstract

Voltage-gated ion channels are of great importance in the generation and propagation of electrical signals in the excitable membranes. In this study, we introduce the stochastic version of the Hodgkin-Huxley formalism and investigate the effect of channel noise on neuronal dynamic behaviors based on a model with the Gaussian noise. We show that the channel noise may result in a spiking activity even in the absence of any stimulus for small membrane patches, and that the spontaneous firing dynamics follows more regular patterns when the membrane patch becomes smaller. It is also shown that the stochastic model converges to the deterministic model for very large membrane patches and regularity pattern of fired spikes exhibit resonance behaviour depending on the stimuli strength and the membrane patch area