2003/02/12 by Dmitri B. Chklovskii, Chklovskii, Dmitri B., Armen Stepanyants +1
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · Neuroscience · Physics and Astronomy · #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #Condensed Matter (cond-mat) #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #General Physics (physics.gen-ph) #Neural dynamics and brain function #Neurological disorders and treatments #Neurons and Cognition (q-bio.NC) #Neuroscience and Neural Engineering #cond-mat #physics.bio-ph #physics.gen-ph #q-bio.NC
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.physics/0302039
8 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2003/02/12 · openalex publication_date 2003/02/12 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
What determines the caliber of axonal branches? We pursue the hypothesis that the axonal caliber has evolved to minimize signal propagation delays, while keeping arbor volume to a minimum. We show that for a general cost function the optimal diameters of mother (d0) and daughter (d1, d2) branches at a bifurcation obey a branching law: d0ν+2=d1ν+2 + d2ν+2. The derivation relies on the fact that the conduction speed scales with the axon diameter to the power ν (ν=1 for myelinated axons and ν=0.5 for non-myelinated axons). We test the branching law on the available experimental data and find a reasonable agreement.