Kaspirzhny A. Biophysical mechanism and parametric sensitivity of the electrical transmission in the neuronal dendrites.

Objects of investigation are passive models of single dendritic cable, bifurcation and complex branched dendrites, built on the basis of computer reconstruction of neurons of different types. The aim of research is to examine how the electrical transfer properties and their parametric sensitivity depends on the characteristics of morphology of neurons with complex dendrites. The investigation completed by the methods of numerical simulations, numerical image processing, mathematical analysis, control theory, mathematical statistics. The thesis is devoted to research the relationship between the transfer of electrical signals in the dendrites of neurons and dendritic branching structure, in particular, the influence of the sensitivity of structure-dependent passive transfer characteristics of the dendrites to changes in membrane conductance. The original method of identifying and estimating the number of the dense groups of dendritic branches with the in-group similarity and between-group difference in electrical transfer properties was proposed. For the first time the parametric sensitivity of the dendritic branches of various size, as the electric transmission systems with distributed inputs and parameters was investigated. Sensitivity function was used for the disclosure of the biophysical mechanism underlying the differentiation of dendritic branches of the bifurcation in their electric transfer properties. Fields of application: theoretical biophysics, neurosciences, education.