I’ve always wondered what happens when a neuron’s charge is decreased but doesn’t hit spiking levels.
From the sounds of this there’s always neurotransmitters being sent, even when there is a small change in voltage.
If a neuron with many dendrites is connected to a bunch of these non-firing neurons then I suppose it could fire, given enough small changes from upstream.
I also remember reading this interesting book that suggested neurons “feed” on the spikes. If they don’t spike for long enough they get weak and potentially die. I’m not sure how that explains the article though.
Neurons will always be firing at some low level background rate, in biology I think the focus is more on the rate of fire than on individual spikes, and as far as I remember if that's all a neuron ever does it will indeed atrophy.
The best book on the subject for me is "How Brains Make Up Their Minds" by Walter J. Freeman, not only is it a short book which explains the real observed activity of neurons, but it is also backed up by an extremely strong vein of philosophy for meaningful interpreting the observations.
A joke of sorts I've heard before (usually in response to someone bringing up the 10% of the brain quote) is "Did you know the human brain uses only 10% of its vocabulary?"
From the sounds of this there’s always neurotransmitters being sent, even when there is a small change in voltage.
If a neuron with many dendrites is connected to a bunch of these non-firing neurons then I suppose it could fire, given enough small changes from upstream.
EDIT: link to what’s considered “quiet” neurons in the article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-spiking_neuron
I also remember reading this interesting book that suggested neurons “feed” on the spikes. If they don’t spike for long enough they get weak and potentially die. I’m not sure how that explains the article though.