The mormyrid electric …sh displays extremely …ne temporal resolution as measured in behavioral studies. The …rst stage of sensory processing, the sensory a¤erents, also display very precise temporal responses to electrical stimulation. The a¤erents are connected through gap junctions to the granular cells, which in addition receive a corollary discharge signal at the time of the electric pulse. The granular cells have a relatively long time constant, seemingly at odds with their presumed role as coincidence detectors. We use experimental data to build a compartmental model that investigates the mechanism by which the relative timing of the two inputs to the granular cells determines the e¤ect of the a¤erent spike through the electrical synapse.
Ovidiu D. Iancu, Jianmei Zhang, Patrick D. Roberts