Solving Hodgkin-Huxley equations using the compact difference scheme -tapering dendrite

Dendritic processing is now considered to be important in pre-processing of signals coming into a cell. Dendrites are involved in both propagation and backpropagation of signals 1. In a cylindrical dendrite, signals moving in either direction will be similar. However, if the dendrites taper, then this is not the case any more. The picture gets more complex if the ion channel distribution along the dendrite is also non-uniform. These equations have been solved using the Chebyshev pseudo-spectral method 2. Here we look at non-uniform den-dritic voltage gated channels in both cylindrical and tapering dendrites. For back-propagating signals, the signal is accentuated in the case of tapering den-drites. We assume a Hodgkin-Huxley formulation of ion channels and solve these equations with the compact finite-difference scheme. The scheme gives spectral-like spatial resolution while being easier to solve than spectral methods. We show that the scheme is able to reproduce the results obtained from spectral methods. The compact difference scheme is widely used to study turbulence in airflow, however it is being used for the first time in our laboratory to solve the equations involving transmission of signals in the brain.