A COMPUTER SIMULATED MODEL OF A SECOND ORDER SENSORY NEURONE

The behaviour of neurones during signal transmission is determined partly by the input to the nerve cell and partly by its inherent properties. A detailed knowledge of the spike trains, which are input to and output from a synapse, may yield information about these synaptic mechanisms. This problem has been treated in relation to data from the dorsal spino-cerebellar tract (DSCT) cells monosynaptically activated from primary endings of muscle spindles. After a description of the firing pattern of these cells the behaviour of various models are examined by computer simulation. A particular type of model approximates the behaviour of the DSCT neurones closely with a rather narrow set of parameters. The model predicts that about 15 primary afferent fibres from one muscle converge on one DSCT cell and that the average size of their EPSPs may be as large as 50% of the threshold of firing. © 1969 Springer-Verlag.