Creating my own section variables?

[gabrielleg]

Hi,

I'm trying to find out how to make my own section variable (or something like it). I would like to specify a different Cm for each section in order to get area out of it. I don't want to use L and diam to get area.

I'm building a 2 compartment model of a cell and will eventually make a small network of these 2 compartment cells. They will all have different Cm's and therefore different areas. The Cm's are what is given to me, as well as total conductances. So as you can see, I don't want to sit around calculating the L and diam for each cell and have to pass area to the .mod files in order to calculate the proper distributed conductances. What can I do?

g

[gabrielleg]

I found a way around my issue. I guess I didn't need a section variable. But out of curiosity, is it possible to create your own section variables?

g

[ted]

I'm building a 2 compartment model of a cell and will eventually make a small network of these 2 compartment cells. They will all have different Cm's and therefore different areas. The Cm's are what is given to me, as well as total conductances.

Assuming that each compartment is represented by a section with nseg == 1, the idiom is

Code: Select all

sectionname {
  cm = totalC / area(0.5)
  gbar_mechanismsuffix = totalG / area(0.5)
}

which of course omits any scale factors that might be needed to reconcile units (cm is in
uf/cm2, area() in um2, and S/cm2 is standard for conductance densities, but for all I know
your total capacitance and conductance parameters might be in farads and micromhos).

[ted]

is it possible to create your own section variables?

Sure. Revise NEURON's source code. But you'll be responsible for debugging and
maintaining your own variant.