Multi-scale nonlinear and stochastic dynamics of traumatized nerve activity

Multiscale modeling, neurons, trauma, ectopic activity, bursting, neural propagation, noise, neural modeling, information theory, oscillations, excitability, pathology, pain
Abstract: Mild traumatic injury resulting from e.g. compression, stroke and epilepsy can lead to impairments of neural activity due to chronically leaky sodium channels. The modeling challenge lies in relating specific physical and/or chemical damage to altered electrochemical activity of the cell, and in eventually explaining pathological firing patterns. This can easily become an exercise in multi-scale modeling, given that fast electrical events underlying the action potential become modulated by slowly altered ionic concentrations. This talk will summarize these challenges, and present our current understanding about the consequences of the observed hyper-excitability, namely, ectopic firing, burst firing, bistability, and subthreshold oscillations. We also discuss how external stimulation can worsen the pathology, and why higher frequencies can get through damaged zones better than low ones.