Compartmental Models

• Neurons have a 3D structure, which is really quite complex.
• Compartmental models break a neuron up into compartments to deal with electrical changes.
• Point models ignore this and treat them as simple equations (or points.)
• (Until quite recently, I thought Hodgkin Huxley models were compartmental models. Then I read the paper properly.)
• So, the neuron is broken into compartments, and energy flows from one compartment to another.
• Typically, energy enters the system (via synapses) in the dendrites.
• It then flows through the neuron.
• I was at a workshop a few years back, and a proper neurobiologist said a rich enough compartmental model was a desciption of a neuron. A point model, is a model.
• Note if you have a thousand compartments to describe a neuron, it takes a long time to simulate the neuron.