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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience pp 992–997Cite as

Dendritic Computation

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Synonyms

Dendritic arithmetic; Dendritic operations; Linear/nonlinear dendritic integration

Definition

Dendritic computations refer to the ability of individual dendritic branches to perform elementary computations on incoming signals. These computations include addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division and can also take the form of logical operations (e.g., AND, OR, XOR). In this chapter, we discuss evidence regarding the type of computations that have been observed in dendritic branches of multiple neuron types as well as the impact of these computations on the function of neural cells and circuits.

Detailed Description

Dendrites are elaborate processes that extend from the cell body of neurons and form the locus of synaptic communication between cells. The biophysical mechanisms that reside in dendrites allow them to locally integrate synaptic inputs in a linear and/or nonlinear manner enabling them to perform different types of computations (London and Häusser 2005;...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB), Heraklion, Crete, Greece

    Panayiota Poirazi

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  1. Panayiota Poirazi
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Correspondence to Panayiota Poirazi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

    Ranu Jung

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Poirazi, P. (2015). Dendritic Computation. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6675-8_125

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