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Updated: Jun 26, 2026

3D Modeling of Dendritic Spines with Synaptic Plasticity
Published on: May 18, 2020
Non-Markovian model for transport and reactions of particles in spiny dendrites
Sergei Fedotov1, Vicenç Méndez
1School of Mathematics, The University of Manchester, Manchester M60 1QD, UK.
Abstract:
Motivated by the experiments [Santamaria, Neuron 52, 635 (2006)10.1016/j.neuron.2006.10.025] that indicated the possibility of subdiffusive transport of molecules along dendrites of cerebellar Purkinje cells, we develop a mesoscopic model for transport and chemical reactions of particles in spiny dendrites. The communication between spines and a parent dendrite is described by a non-Markovian random process and, as a result, the overall movement of particles can be subdiffusive. A system of integrodifferential equations is derived for the particles densities in dendrites and spines. This system involves the spine-dendrite interaction term which describes the memory effects and nonlocality in space. We consider the impact of power-law waiting time distributions on the transport of biochemical signals and mechanism of the accumulation of plasticity-inducing signals inside spines.
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