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School of Science Institute for
Mathematical Modeling and
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Action potential via memristive circuits

PI: Y. Joglekar (Department of Physics, IUPUI)

Memristor (memory resistor) is a passive electrical circuit element whose instantaneous resistance depends not only on the voltage, but the history of the voltage applied to it. The first memristor was fabricated in 2008 by the HP labs in a semiconductor titanium-dioxide thin film. It provided the first example where the microscopic mechanism - the motion of dopant ions - responsible for the memory resistor is well understood. Apart from its potential for high-density memory storage, the electrical properties of a memristor share similarities with those of ion channels in biological membranes including axons. The electrical response of an axon is traditionally modeled using Hodgkin-Huxley equations, along with phenomenologically determined voltage-dependent parameters. However, in contrast to the memristor case, a microscopic derivation of these parameters is neither well-understood nor straightforward. Our objective is to determine and investigate the memristive circuits that can mimic the action-potential-like response of a neuron. To that end, we will numerically obtain the current-voltage behavior of Hodgkin-Huxley neuron under steady-state and periodic stimulus current and its dependence on the phenomenological parameters, and compare the results with those obtained from the current-voltage characteristics of a network with a number of memristors. This research may, thus, lead to the identification of a minimal circuit with inorganic memristors that displays signatures of a neuron.