The mammalian neuron is compartmented by dendritic spines. Each spine
functions in much the same way as a whole invertebrate neuron, so that 1)
the computational capabilities of the mammalian neuron exceed those of
the invertebrate neuron by several orders of magnitude and 2) the
internal dynamics of the dendritic tree are significant in the processing
of the mammalian neuron. For example, if you increase the rate of
excitatory pulses arriving at the neuron as a whole, the gain increases.
This suggests that Freeman's KI dynamics may have some validity for
single, whole mammalian neurons. Has anyone investigated this?
--
Harry Erwin
Internet: herwin at gmu.edu
Just a dumb engineer working on Katchalsky nets....
