Effect of Ion Channel Randomness on Sensitivity of Neurons to External Electromagnetic Fields: Computational Study

We perform stochastic simulations of the Hodgkin–Huxley and Morris–Lecar models with different numbers of ion channels in order to describe the effects of periodic electrical driving on spike rates and the regularity of spiking in a single neuron. For stochastic modeling, we use an efficient method that reduces the piecewise-deterministic Markov process of the membrane potential evolution to an ordinary differential equation between random opening and closing events. To characterize a regular component in the resulting voltage time series, we adopt a Wiener order parameter based on the autocorrelation function. We show that the effect of ion channel stochasticity on the spike rate is stronger at lower external force frequencies. The regular component of neural activity exhibits resonant-like behavior as a function of the driving frequency, with a maximum in the beta range.