Developmental evolution of dendritic morphology in a multi-compartmental neuron model

Through the use of a multi-compartmental neuron simulation, Mainen and Sejnowski (1996) demonstrated that spike generation in neurons is a function of their dendritic structure. We investigate the determination of dendritic morphology given a desired set of spike traces. A genetic algorithm is used to identify optimal parameters for a developmental model which simulates the growth of 3-dimensional dendrites. For two classes of neurons with different spiking behaviour, the developmental evolutionary process discovers ranges of viable dendritic morphologies which satisfactorily match the desired spike traces