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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

A Simple and Inexpensive Method for Determining Cold Sensitivity and Adaptation in Mice
Published on: March 17, 2015
On the role of subthreshold currents in the Huber-Braun cold receptor model
Christian Finke1, Jan A Freund, Epaminondas Rosa
1ICBM, University of Oldenburg, Carl-von-Ossietzky-Strasse 9-11, 26111 Oldenburg, Germany. christian.finke@uni-oldenburg.de
Abstract:
We study the role of the strength of subthreshold currents in a four-dimensional Hodgkin-Huxley-type model of mammalian cold receptors. Since a total diminution of subthreshold activity corresponds to a decomposition of the model into a slow, subthreshold, and a fast, spiking subsystem, we first elucidate their respective dynamics separately and draw conclusions about their role for the generation of different spiking patterns. These results motivate a numerical bifurcation analysis of the effect of varying the strength of subthreshold currents, which is done by varying a suitable control parameter. We work out the key mechanisms which can be attributed to subthreshold activity and furthermore elucidate the dynamical backbone of different activity patterns generated by this model.
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