Dendritic Computations Through Morphology and Connectivity

The book will first take a look at morphological properties of dendrites and summarize the approaches to either measure dendrite morphology quantitatively or to actually generate synthetic dendrite morphologies in computer models. This morphological characterization ranges from studying fractal principles to describe dendrite topologies, to the consequences of optimization principles for dendrite shape. The studies will focus not only on abstract branching statistics, but also on the biophysical mechanisms of dendrite growth.   A major role of dendrites is to collect inputs from other neurons in the input region of a cell. A lot is known about how connectivity patterns, e.g., in the cortex impact on dendritic shape. In the second part of this book will therefore be collected individual approaches to study which aspects of dendrite shape can be related directly to underlying circuit constraints. In this way they can be distinguished from the features, which are specifically responsible for computation.   The third main theme of this book focuses on how dendrites contribute to the computations that neurons perform. What role do dendritic morphology, the distributions of synapses and active properties over the dendritic tree play in determining the output of a neuron in response to its input? We intend to bring together a wide range of studies, with topics ranging from general to system-specific phenomena, with some having a strong experimental component, and others being fully theoretical. The studies will come from many different neural systems and animal species, for example, coincidence detector neurons in the mammalian auditory brainstem, and visual movement detectors in locusts. With this broad focus the book intends to give an overview of the diversity of mechanisms that dendrites can employ to shape neural computations. ?

• ISBN: 978-1-4614-8093-8
• Editorial: Springer
• Encuadernacion: Cartoné
• Páginas: 350
• Fecha Publicación: 30/10/2013
• Nº Volúmenes: 1
• Idioma: Inglés