My continuing work on a detailed multi-compartment neuron model (that I've already posted quite a few questions on these forums regarding, haha) is nearing it's conclusion! We have a model that we're very happy with up and running, and we're now doing some in silico experiments on it to investigate it's properties before we publish it (where, of course, we will cite NEURON quite heavily!).
Part of this exploration led us to this paper by Kalmbach et. al. in Neuron: https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdfExtended ... 18)30900-0
This paper has some interesting insights into the relationship between the h-current and theta resonance that we are investigating in our model, and as such we want to do some comparisons between our model and theirs. Of primary interest relative to the post here is the following: I'd like to test whether different morphologies affect this behavior by directly implementing our neuron model (parameters, ion channels, conductances, etc.) but with the Kalmbach morphology as opposed to the morphology of our neuron.
Doing so does not appear to be as straightforward as I would've hoped, however, primarily because the code used to create the Kalmbach model (found here: https://github.com/AllenInstitute/human ... physiology) is quite different than what we're using in our model. In particular, it appears that the Kalmbach model makes heavy use of Python to execute their code, and unfortunately I am not a Python user (yes, I know, learning Python is amongst my long academic to-do list, haha). As such, it's become quite difficult for me to parse their code to see how the cell is actually built.
However after banging my head against things for a while, I believe I finally found what amounts to the "morphology" file, which is entitled 478230220.swc. However, this file is formatted quite differently from what I use in my model. Just as an example, here are the first few lines of the .swc file:
Code: Select all
# generated by Vaa3D Plugin sort_neuron_swc
# source file(s): E:/478230220/reconstruction - 478230220/478230220/man2.01_478230220_m_dendrite.swc
# id,type,x,y,z,r,pid
1 1 391.996 1096.83 24.36 10.95 -1
2 2 390.074 1106.29 23.419 0.56 1
3 2 389.833 1107.41 23.397 0.117 2
4 2 389.559 1108.52 23.451 0.114 3
5 2 389.261 1109.62 23.54 0.114 4
Code: Select all
proc celldef() {
topol()
subsets()
geom()
biophys()
geom_nseg()
}
create filament_100000042[211]
proc topol() { local i
for i = 1, 2 connect filament_100000042[i](0), filament_100000042(1)
for i = 3, 4 connect filament_100000042[i](0), filament_100000042[1](1)
...
basic_shape()
}
proc shape3d_1() {
filament_100000042 {pt3dclear()
pt3dadd(552.703, 988.659, 129.291, 4.79842)
pt3dadd(552.615, 988.24, 128.971, 5.52792)
}
filament_100000042[1] {pt3dclear()
pt3dadd(552.615, 988.24, 128.971, 5.52792)
pt3dadd(552.601, 987.718, 128.617, 6.05773)
}
...
- Does the .swc file I highlighted here encapsulate the entire Kalmbach morphology, or is there something else I'm missing? I have a sense that there might be a secondary file that "labels" the various compartments, but I was unable to find it... the Github repository seems more geared towards people who simply want to "run" the code as is, with slight perturbations to the inputs, rather than get into the "guts" of the code, making this a challenge, exacerbated by my lack of Python knowledge.
- Once I have all the aspects of the code that makes up the Kalmbach model's morphology, how would I go about "loading" the neuron morphology as defined here, as opposed to the way I have things in my current model?
- Once I'm able to "load" Kalmbach's morphology, as long as the compartments are labeled similarly to how I did it, will putting my model "into" that morphology be as simple as running my biophys() proc?
Thanks for reading through this long, detailed post... hopefully I included everything necessary for this question.
P.S. I understand there's a possibility that this question might be one that the authors of the paper may be better suited to answer if it goes a bit beyond simple coding issues. If that's the case please feel free to let me know and I can proceed along that path!