A stochastic dynamical model for the characterization of the geometrical structure of dendritic processes

Under certain basic assumptions the branching pattern of dendrites can be modeled as a Galton-Watson process in varying environment. Using results from graph theory we compute the probability distributions, expectations and variances for biologically significant variables such as the number of (intermediate and terminal) branches, the maximum number of orders, etc., together with the limit behavior of these quantities. Furthermore, the probability measure induced by the Galton-Watson process on the set of all trees is calculated. The measure assigns to any set of branching patterns the probability that it is realized by a certain process, which is completely described through the bifurcation probabilities.