Definition
The quasi-active approximation of a dendritic cable is a linearized description of a cable with voltage-dependent membrane conductances. It is an extension of classical passive cable theory relying on linearization of the voltage-dependent conductances around a reference membrane potential (typically the resting potential). The current thereby acquires a linear current–voltage relationship but still has an activation time constant associated with it that determines its gating dynamics. This approximation accurately describes the frequency-dependent filtering of the nonlinear cable for sufficiently small voltage deflections around the reference potential.
Detailed Description
The use of linearized descriptions of voltage-dependent membrane conductances in point neuron models has a rich history, e.g., Hodgkin and Huxley (1952) already used this to analyze the subthreshold (oscillatory) response of the space-clampedsquid giant axon. However, the first use of such methods in a...
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References
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Remme, M.W.H. (2015). Quasi-active Approximation of Nonlinear Dendritic Cables. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6675-8_34
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6675-8_34
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