ArticlePloS one2017
The basis of sharp spike onset in standard biophysical models.
Article in PloS one, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Single Neuron Contributions to the Auditory Brainstem EEG.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Axon initial segment structure and function in health and disease.Physiological reviews · 2025Review
- Theory of axo-axonic inhibition.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- KThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- The impact of dynamic reversal potential on the evolution of action potential attributes during spike trains.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2025Article
- Tracking axon initial segment plasticity using high-density microelectrode arrays: A computational study.Frontiers in neuroinformatics · 2022Article
- Ultrafast population coding and axo-somatic compartmentalization.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Alterations of the axon initial segment in multiple sclerosis grey matter.Brain communications · 2022Article
- Neural excitability increases with axonal resistance between soma and axon initial segment.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- New methods for quantifying rapidity of action potential onset differentiate neuron types.PloS one · 2021Article
- The location of the axon initial segment affects the bandwidth of spike initiation dynamics.PLoS computational biology · 2020Article
- Article
- Diversity of Axonal and Dendritic Contributions to Neuronal Output.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2019Article
- Role of sodium channel subtype in action potential generation by neocortical pyramidal neurons.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Nanodiamonds-induced effects on neuronal firing of mouse hippocampal microcircuits.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Voltage-Gated Sodium Channels in Neocortical Pyramidal Neurons Display Cole-Moore Activation Kinetics.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2018Article
- Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
In most vertebrate neurons, spikes initiate in the axonal initial segment (AIS). When recorded in the soma, they have a surprisingly sharp onset, as if sodium (Na) channels opened abruptly. The main view stipulates that spikes initiate in a conventional manner at the distal end of the AIS, then progressively sharpen as they backpropagate to the soma. We examined the biophysical models used to substantiate this view, and we found that spikes do not initiate through a local axonal current loop that propagates along the axon, but through a global current loop encompassing the AIS and soma, which forms an electrical dipole. Therefore, the phenomenon is not adequately modeled as the backpropagation of an electrical wave along the axon, since the wavelength would be as large as the entire system. Instead, in these models, we found that spike initiation rather follows the critical resistive coupling model proposed recently, where the Na current entering the AIS is matched by the axial resistive current flowing to the soma. Besides demonstrating it by examining the balance of currents at spike initiation, we show that the observed increase in spike sharpness along the axon is artifactual and disappears when an appropriate measure of rapidness is used; instead, somatic onset rapidness can be predicted from spike shape at initiation site. Finally, we reproduce the phenomenon in a two-compartment model, showing that it does not rely on propagation. In these models, the sharp onset of somatic spikes is therefore not an artifact of observing spikes at the incorrect location, but rather the signature that spikes are initiated through a global soma-AIS current loop forming an electrical dipole.
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