A two-compartment model for the dependence of a postsynaptic potential on a postsynaptic current, measured by the patch-clamp method

As known, the dependence of a postsynaptic potential (PSP)1 on a postsynaptic current (PSC) is not satisfactorily approximated by simple Ohm's law due to a significant role of electrotonic propagation of currents along dendrites. The present work shows that a two-compartment model of a neuron, conjointly solving the two problems of voltage and current clamping, gives quite precisely the PSP-on-PSC dependence, in spite of inaccurate reconstruction of currents on dendritic terminals. The two-compartment model is compared with the neuron model consisting of a distributed cylindrical dendrite and a concentrated soma.