Extracellular stimulation and ephaptic coupling of neurons in a fully coupled finite element-based Extracellular—Membrane—Intracellular (EMI) model

The results provide quantitative insight into extracellular field-mediated neural coupling and how externally applied fields, such as those used in deep brain stimulation, interact with single-neuron biophysics. The results support the view that ephaptic interactions between neurons are more plausibly expressed as spike-timing modulation and synchronization than as direct excitatory triggering under physiological conditions.