Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
J Neurosci. 2010 Feb 3;30(5):1925-36. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3635-09.2010.
The cooperative action of neurons and glia generates electrical fields, but their effect on individual neurons via ephaptic interactions is mostly unknown. Here, we analyze the impact of spatially inhomogeneous electric fields on the membrane potential, the induced membrane field, and the induced current source density of one-dimensional cables as well as morphologically realistic neurons and discuss how the features of the extracellular field affect these quantities. We show through simulations that endogenous fields, associated with hippocampal theta and sharp waves, can greatly affect spike timing. These findings imply that local electric fields, generated by the cooperative action of brain cells, can influence the timing of neural activity.
神经元和神经胶质细胞的协同作用会产生电场，但它们通过电突触相互作用对单个神经元的影响在很大程度上尚不清楚。在这里，我们分析了空间不均匀电场对一维电缆以及形态逼真神经元的膜电位、诱导膜场和诱导电流源密度的影响，并讨论了外场的特征如何影响这些量。我们通过模拟表明，与海马 theta 和锐波相关的内源性场可以极大地影响尖峰的时间。这些发现表明，由脑细胞协同作用产生的局部电场可以影响神经活动的时间。
