Study of Neuronal Properties, Synaptic Plasticity and Network Interactions Using a Computer Reconstituted Neuronal Network Derived from Fundamental Biophysical Principles.

摘要

The computer models simulating the biophysical properties of neurons are being implemented on the Macintosh IIci computer. The coding of the neural simulator programs MacNeuron and MacNerveNet have initiated. The software has gone through the design phase, and is now in the development phase. Based on careful analysis, the design decision was made to implement the neural simulators using object-oriented programming language over the traditional procedural programming language. The choice of Object Pascal language will facilitate future adaptation and modification of the simulators to incorporate newly discovered biophysical properties of neurons in the model without extensively re-writing the programs. Since object-oriented codes are modular in design, the program can also implement the plastic changes of synaptic substrates in a well structured organization. The various membrane ionic channels are implemented as objects in the same class, which have similar but unique (biophysical)properties. Thus, a class library can be created to form a collection of different ionic conductance channels, were new (user-specified) channels can be added to the class library. They can be incorporated into the neural simulators easily using the inheritance-properties of superclass and subclass provided by object-oriented languages. Modules of the programs are written representing the internal structure of the neural models.