title: Simulation of sensory neuronal discharge characteristics: the effects of multiple receptor sites and sources of variability.
abstract: There is conflict in the literature concerning the effect of multiple receptive endings on sensory afferent discharge. We simulated the discharge of intrapulmonary chemoreceptors of ducks and studied the effect of numbers of receptive endings, membrane 'noise' and changes in receptor threshold and gain. We found increasing membrane noise could not account for variability in spontaneously discharging intrapulmonary chemoreceptors and that, over a wide range of amplitude of various sources of noise, increasing the number of receptive endings increased discharge frequency and precision of transduction of the stimulus by reducing variability.
authors.affiliation: Department of Avian Sciences, University of California, Davis 95616.
authors.forename: T P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Adamson
authors.forename: R E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Burger
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials; D000818:Animals; D002628:Chemoreceptor Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004372:Ducks; D008168:Lung / Q000294:innervation*; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009475:Neurons, Afferent / Q000502:physiology*; D012684:Sensory Thresholds