Ephaptic information flow: Information processing in groups of neurons

In this paper, we are interested in determining the information bearing properties and abilities of the Hodgkin‐Huxley equation. For the case of a single axon, we describe precisely how the mutual information between the input and the output of the model can be computed. We extend this to the case of coupled equations and find the intriguing numerical result that mutual information between the input and output variables decreases as ephaptic coupling strength increases. Our results indicate that extracellular effects act as distortion vis-a-vis the information borne by the axons. Incorporating extracellular effects explicitly in the “W” coupling matrix by making it a matrix of vectors instead of scalars, we show that under ephaptic coupling, the corresponding synaptic signal depends on these effects.