Quantitative evaluations of the contribution of the excitatory ionic conductance to repetitive spiking in a mathematical model of medial vestibular nucleus neurons.

Medial vestibular nucleus neurons show spontaneous repetitive spiking. This spiking activity was reproduced by a Hodgkin-Huxley-type mathematical model, which was developed in a previous study. The present study performed computer simulations of this model to evaluate the contribution of the excitatory ionic conductance to repetitive spiking. The present results revealed the difference in the influence of the transient sodium, persistent sodium, and calcium conductance on spiking activity. The differences between the present and previous results obtained from other neuronal mathematical models were discussed.