Figure 3. An example of a self-regulating population of model neurons that establish temperature-robust sets of conductance densities.

(A) Cartoon of the conductance regulation model used in this paper. Calcium concentration directly modulates the expression rates of all conductances densities by altering the rate of production of a channel intermediate (‘mRNA’) on an appropriately slow timescale (orders of magnitude slower than fluctuations in calcium due to spikes and membrane potential oscillations). (Lower panel) Example traces showing convergence of the model. Scale bar: 50 mV (vertical), 500 ms (horizontal). See ref [11] for full model details. (B) (Left panel) Random initial conductance densities in 25 model neurons. (Middle panel) Steady-state conductance densities in the same 25 model neurons in the left panel following convergence under the control of one example parameter set from the 2028 parameter sets that produced temperature-robust self-regulating neurons. (Right panel) Q₁₀ values of the conductances in the model neurons in the left and middle panels. (C) Acute temperature ramps in five example model neurons selected from the steady-state population in (B). (D) Quantification of duty cycle in the five example neurons in (C) as a function of temperature. (E) Time-stretched membrane potential traces from the blue model neuron in (C).