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Ultrafast traveling wave dominates the electric organ discharge of Apteronotus leptorhynchus: an inverse modelling study
Identifying and understanding the current sources that give rise to bioelectric fields is a fundamental problem in the biological sciences. It is very difficult, for example, to attribute the time-varying features of an electroencephalogram recorded from the head surface to the neural activity of sp...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4626797/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26514932 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep15780 |
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author | Shifman, Aaron R. Longtin, André Lewis, John E. |
author_facet | Shifman, Aaron R. Longtin, André Lewis, John E. |
author_sort | Shifman, Aaron R. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Identifying and understanding the current sources that give rise to bioelectric fields is a fundamental problem in the biological sciences. It is very difficult, for example, to attribute the time-varying features of an electroencephalogram recorded from the head surface to the neural activity of specific brain areas; model systems can provide important insight into such problems. Some species of fish actively generate an oscillating (c. 1000 Hz) quasi-dipole electric field to communicate and sense their environment in the dark. A specialized electric organ comprises neuron-like cells whose collective signal underlies this electric field. As a step towards understanding the detailed biophysics of signal generation in these fish, we use an anatomically-detailed finite-element modelling approach to reverse-engineer the electric organ signal over one oscillation cycle. We find that the spatiotemporal profile of current along the electric organ constitutes a travelling wave that is well-described by two spatial Fourier components varying in time. The conduction velocity of this wave is faster than action potential conduction in any known neuronal axon (>200 m/s), suggesting that the spatiotemporal features of high-frequency electric organ discharges are not constrained by the conduction velocities of spinal neuron pathways. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4626797 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-46267972015-11-03 Ultrafast traveling wave dominates the electric organ discharge of Apteronotus leptorhynchus: an inverse modelling study Shifman, Aaron R. Longtin, André Lewis, John E. Sci Rep Article Identifying and understanding the current sources that give rise to bioelectric fields is a fundamental problem in the biological sciences. It is very difficult, for example, to attribute the time-varying features of an electroencephalogram recorded from the head surface to the neural activity of specific brain areas; model systems can provide important insight into such problems. Some species of fish actively generate an oscillating (c. 1000 Hz) quasi-dipole electric field to communicate and sense their environment in the dark. A specialized electric organ comprises neuron-like cells whose collective signal underlies this electric field. As a step towards understanding the detailed biophysics of signal generation in these fish, we use an anatomically-detailed finite-element modelling approach to reverse-engineer the electric organ signal over one oscillation cycle. We find that the spatiotemporal profile of current along the electric organ constitutes a travelling wave that is well-described by two spatial Fourier components varying in time. The conduction velocity of this wave is faster than action potential conduction in any known neuronal axon (>200 m/s), suggesting that the spatiotemporal features of high-frequency electric organ discharges are not constrained by the conduction velocities of spinal neuron pathways. Nature Publishing Group 2015-10-30 /pmc/articles/PMC4626797/ /pubmed/26514932 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep15780 Text en Copyright © 2015, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Shifman, Aaron R. Longtin, André Lewis, John E. Ultrafast traveling wave dominates the electric organ discharge of Apteronotus leptorhynchus: an inverse modelling study |
title | Ultrafast traveling wave dominates the electric organ discharge of Apteronotus leptorhynchus: an inverse modelling study |
title_full | Ultrafast traveling wave dominates the electric organ discharge of Apteronotus leptorhynchus: an inverse modelling study |
title_fullStr | Ultrafast traveling wave dominates the electric organ discharge of Apteronotus leptorhynchus: an inverse modelling study |
title_full_unstemmed | Ultrafast traveling wave dominates the electric organ discharge of Apteronotus leptorhynchus: an inverse modelling study |
title_short | Ultrafast traveling wave dominates the electric organ discharge of Apteronotus leptorhynchus: an inverse modelling study |
title_sort | ultrafast traveling wave dominates the electric organ discharge of apteronotus leptorhynchus: an inverse modelling study |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4626797/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26514932 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep15780 |
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