ABSTRACT
In the neural circuits as well as other excitable cell systems, cells are occasionally coupled by electrical synapses and constitute an electrically continual laminar structure, refered to as a syncytium. The neural syncytium is often found in the developing neocortex and hippocampus, but is also prevalent in a number of nuclei in the mature mammalian brain and especially in the retina. This chapter presents analytical solutions for models describing the voltage responses of single layer neural syncytium, and double layer syncytium in which two layers of syncytia are interacting reciprocally. They are shown to provide intuitive understandings on the response properties in terms of physiological parameters, i.e. membrane impedances, strength of chemical synapses and coupling resistances connecting neighbouring cells. Finally, the function of syncytial integration in early vision is characterized by the standard regularization theory.
