Development of a Simplified Model of the Hippocampal CA1 Pyramidal Neuron

Introduction: The hippocampus is critically involved in memory formation for facts and events. Beyond its physiological role the hippocampal region is of a particular interest for scientist and clinicians as well because of its low seizure susceptibility threshold and its possible role in Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. The output of the hippocampus is through area CA1 pyramidal cells, thus the characterization of the pathophysiological integrative properties of its principal neurons, the pyramidal cells is of particular interest. Besides the experimental techniques in neuroscience, a large number of computational studies have been published involving CA1 pyramidal neurons.
Aim: The aim of our study was to develop a compartment model of CA1 pyramidal neurons that reproduces the experimentally observed main electrophysiological properties, with low computational effort.
Material and methods: We constructed a compartmental model of a pyramidal neuron with simplified geometry using the NEURON program. Active conductances were implemented in the soma, axon and dendrites.
Results: We compared our model to other computational models and found that it reproduces the main firing properties of the CA1 pyramidal neurons, with a lower computational cost.
Conclusions: Our model is suitable to be incorporated in a larger neural network.