Modelling the Effects of Early Exposure to Alcohol on the Excitability of Cortical Neurons

In recent years, a novel approach based on multi-objective optimization has been developed to automatically tune biophysically realistic, multi-compartmental neuron models starting from electrophysiological recordings. Here, we apply this methodology to the optimization of model neurons capable of reproducing the reduced excitability observed in experiments carried out in cortical pyramidal cells in a rodent model of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. We find that both control and ethanol-exposed model cells present an excellent match with the experiments in terms of membrane voltage dynamics, with the latter group displaying a small but significant rightward shift of their current-frequency relationship. We identify a possible interplay between model parameters and cellular morphology and suggest future improvements to better capture the features of dendritic voltage dynamics.