Temperature compensation in a small rhythmic circuit

Abstract

Temperature affects the conductances and kinetics of the ionic channels that underlie neuronal activity. Each membrane conductance has a different characteristic temperature sensitivity, which raises the question of how neurons and neuronal circuits can operate robustly over wide temperature ranges. To address this, we employed computational models of the pyloric network of crabs and lobsters. We employed a landscape optimization scheme introduced previously (Alonso and Marder, 2019) to produce multiple different models that exhibit triphasic pyloric rhythms over a range of temperatures. We use the currentscapes introduced in (Alonso and Marder, 2019) to explore the dynamics of model currents and how they change with temperature. We found that temperature changes the relative contributions of the currents to neuronal activity so that rhythmic activity smoothly slides through changes in mechanisms. Moreover, the responses of the models to extreme perturbations—such as gradually decreasing a current type—are often qualitatively different at different temperatures.