Model of the Nerve Impulse with Account of Mechanosensory Processes: Stationary Solutions.

Alexander Mengnjo¹, Alain M. Dikandé², Gideon A. Ngwa¹

¹Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, University of Buea, Buea, Cameroon.
²Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Buea, Buea, Cameroon.

DOI: 10.4236/jamp.2020.810156                

Abstract

Mechanotransduction refers to a physiological process by which mechanical forces, such as pressures exerted by ionized fluids on cell membranes and tissues, can trigger excitations of electrical natures that play important role in the control of various sensory (i.e. stimuli-responsive) organs and homeostasis of living organisms. In this work, the influence of mechanotransduction processes on the generic mechanism of the action potential is investigated analytically, by considering a mathematical model that consists of two coupled nonlinear partial differential equations. One of these two equations is the Korteweg-de Vries equation governing the spatio-temporal evolution of the density difference between intracellular and extracellular fluids across the nerve membrane, and the other is Hodgkin-Huxley cable equation for the transmembrane voltage with a self-regulatory (i.e. diode-type) membrane capacitance. The self-regulatory feature here refers to the assumption that membrane capacitance varies with the difference in density of ion-carrying intracellular and extracellular fluids, thus ensuring an electromechanical feedback mechanism and consequently an effective coupling of the two nonlinear equations. The exact one-soliton solution to the density-difference equation is obtained in terms of a pulse excitation. With the help of this exact pulse solution the Hodgkin-Huxley cable equation is shown to transform, in steady state, to a linear eigenvalue problem some bound states of which can be obtained exactly. Few of such bound-state solutions are found analytically.

Keywords

Nerve Impulse, Mechanosensory Response, Hodgkin-Huxley Equation, Korteweg-de Vries Equation, Associated Legendre Polynomials

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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