Realizing medium spiny neurons with a simple neuron model

Striatal medium spiny neurons (MSNs) constitute input nuclei of the basal ganglia. Most well-known dichotomous of striatal MSNs stem from dopaminergic modulation of striatal processing. Dopamine modulates excitability in striatal MSNs with a complex underlying mechanism and lack of balance in this delicate system leads to pathologies such as Parkinson’s disease. On the contrary, investigation of such a system requires simple, but yet comprehensive models that are capable of capturing complex behaviour of MSNs. We propose a reduced-computational but biologically plausible model that mimics the cell dynamics of striatal D1- and D2-type MSNs with different levels of dopamine using data from a recent study. Proposed computational model shows good matches to the MSN responses and captures some essential features of MSNs such as first spike latencies, dopamine modulated state transitions and enhanced response to depolarizing input during dopamine intervention.