Coombes S, Bressloff P C
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, United Kingdom.
Phys Rev Lett. 2003 Jul 11;91(2):028102. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.028102. Epub 2003 Jul 9.
In this Letter we present the explicit construction of a saltatory traveling pulse of nonconstant profile in an idealized model of dendritic tissue. Excitable dendritic spine clusters, modeled with integrate-and-fire (IF) units, are connected to a passive dendritic cable at a discrete set of points. The saltatory nature of the wave is directly attributed to the breaking of translation symmetry in the cable. The conditions for propagation failure are presented as a function of cluster separation and IF threshold.
