Temperature-dependent bursting pattern analysis by modified Plant model

Many electrophysiological properties of neuron including firing rates and rhythmical oscillation change in response to a temperature variation, but the mechanism underlying these correlations remains unverified. In this study, we analyzed various action potential (AP) parameters of bursting pacemaker neurons in the abdominal ganglion of Aplysia juliana to examine whether or not bursting patterns are altered in response to temperature change. Here we found that the inter-burst interval, burst duration, and number of spike during burst decreased as temperature increased. On the other hand, the numbers of bursts per minute and numbers of spikes per minute increased and then decreased, but interspike interval during burst firstly decreased and then increased. We also tested the reproducibility of temperature-dependent changes in bursting patterns and AP parameters. Finally we performed computational simulations of these phenomena by using a modified Plant model composed of equations with temperature-dependent scaling factors to mathematically clarify the temperature-dependent changes of bursting patterns in burst-firing neurons. Taken together, we found that the modified Plant model could trace the ionic mechanism underlying the temperature-dependent change in bursting pattern from experiments with bursting pacemaker neurons in the abdominal ganglia of Aplysia juliana.