Fig. 5.

Effect of cell architecture on total membrane capacitance estimates. Capacitance was measured using either the current-clamp (CC_step; filled symbols) or voltage-clamp step protocols (VC_step; open symbols) and is graphed without normalization. The actual capacitance was determined from the surface area of the cell and the specific membrane capacitance. A: asymmetric tree. The inset illustrates the architecture of this model: each subsequent dendritic level has a maximum of double the number of dendrites of the preceding level and all branches at any given level emerge from a single dendrite. B: concentric tree. The same dendrites as in A all emerge directly from the soma. C: comparison of the data from the asymmetric tree (from A) and data from a “symmetric tree” in which the same branches as in A emerge symmetrically from the previous level (see text).