An electromagnetic view of relay time in propagation of neural signals

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/abc0d2

Abstract We review the experimental and computational data about the propagation of neural signals in myelinated axons in mice, cats, rabbits, and frogs published in the past five decades. In contrast to the natural assumption that neural signals occur one by one in time and in space, we figure out that neural signals are highly overlapped in time between neighboring nodes. This phenomenon was occasionally illustrated in some early reports, but seemed to have been overlooked for some time. The shift in time between two successive neural signals from neighboring nodes, defined as relay time τ , was calculated to be only 16.3 μ s-87.0 μ s, i.e., 0.8%-4.4% of the average duration of an action potential peak (roughly 2 ms). We present a clearer picture of the exact physical process about how the information transmits along a myelinated axon, rather than a whole action potential peak, what is transmitted is only a rising electric field caused by transmembrane ion flows. Here in the paper, τ represents the waiting time until the neighboring node senses an attenuated electric field reaching the threshold to trigger the open state. The mechanisms addressed in this work have the potential to be universal, and may hold clues to revealing the exact triggering processes of voltage-gated ion channels and various brain functions.

Keywords: neural signal relay propagation velocity electromagnetic field model ion channels

Received: 03 July 2020
Revised: 09 September 2020
Accepted manuscript online: 14 October 2020

PACS:	87.19.lb	(Action potential propagation and axons)
	87.19.lq	(Neuronal wave propagation)
	87.19.rp	(Impulse propagation)
	87.19.L-	(Neuroscience)

Fund: Project supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant Nos. 2017YFA0701302 and 2016YFA0200802) and the Fundamental Research Funds of Shandong University, China (Grant No. 2018GN030).

Corresponding Authors: ^†Corresponding author. E-mail: xujj@sdu.edu.cn ^‡Corresponding author. E-mail: xusy@pku.edu.cn

Cite this article:

Jing-Jing Xu(徐晶晶), San-Jin Xu(徐三津), Fan Wang(王帆), and Sheng-Yong Xu(许胜勇) An electromagnetic view of relay time in propagation of neural signals 2021 Chin. Phys. B 30 028701

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