Program
| Poster PS37B | |
|---|---|
| Wendy Smith | |
| Case Western Reserve University | |
| Title | Precision of burst timing in conditional pacemakers of the pre-Botzinger complex studied in silico. |
| Abstract | Maintaining a stable respiratory rhythm is a crucial function of the human brainstem area known as the preBoetzinger Complex (pBC). Breakdown of reliable rhythmic behavior at the level of single nerve cells in this complex might play a role in certain breathing disorders. For example, failure of the immature circuit to sustain a regular rhythm may contribute to apnea of prematurity in preterm infants and may be a contributing factor to sudden infant death syndrome in fullterm infants. It is well established that individual nerve cells may produce highly unreliable patterns of action potential timing in response to some patterns of input, particularly constant DC current injection. Despite sources of variability such as irregular synaptic inputs it has been observed that adding a small amplitude fluctuating current to a given DC current injection can dramatically increase the reliability and precision of the response in a wide variety of cells. We investigated the temporal precision of burst-like activity onset for conditional pacemaker cells (using the NEURON simulation environment) driven by constant, sinusoidal and representative endogenous synaptic drive currents. |
| Coauthors | Timothy S. Anderson, Christopher G. Wilson, Kenneth A. Loparo and Peter J. Thomas |
| Location | Woodward Lobby (Wednesday-Thursday) |