Temperature influence of neuronal ephaptic coupling via Hodgkin-Huxley model
Ephaptic Entrainment. Ephaptic Communication. Hodgkin & Huxley Model. Temperature.
Several studies have already shown the importance of synaptic, chemical or electrical, communication in
maintaining various biological functions in the human body, as well as its sensitivity to temperature variations. In
addition, to neuronal communication, there is another type of communication, called ephaptic communication.
Ephaptic communication arises from electrical fields generated by a neuron or neuron population. This
communication, which is still little explored, has been gaining prominence because several hypotheses have been
raised about its biological function. Therefore, this work aims to introduce the ephaptic entrainment term into the
Hodgkin and Huxley model, as well as the term responsible for temperature variation in the model. The results of
this work were compared with empirical results and results obtained via hybrid model simulation. To obtain the
results, we varied the temperature in a symmetrical interval, around 0ºC, and separated the neuronal activity into
two regimes: Subthreshold and Suprathreshold. To analyse the subthreshold results, we used circular statistics to
evaluate the phase differences between the neuronal potential and the external ephaptic signal. In the
suprathreshold regime, we used the Inter-Spike Interval (ISI) to evaluate the model’s firing frequency, the
Population Vector to obtain the phase preferences between the neuronal potential and the ephaptic signal, and we
ended by using Spike Field Coherence (SFC) to measure the synchronization between the signals. The results
obtained in this work, by simulating the adapted Hodgkin and Huxley model, not only resemble the results in the
literature, but also show that temperature can influence ephaptic entrainment.