Temporal Windowing in Neurons
According to Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron Neurons are electrically excitable, due to maintenance of voltage gradients across their membranes . If the voltage changes by a large enough amount over a short interval, the neuron generates an all-or-nothing electrochemical pulse called an action potential . But what, I wonder, is the mechanism by which a neuron imposes a time window on recognizing the threshold change in voltage? I haven’t found anything about this online, and it seems that the particular mechanism employed could have an important effect on how the neuron functions. Neurons receive both excitory and inhibitory input voltages, and it seems that the neuron sums these positive and negative voltages to test whether the threshold voltage has been reached. It’s puzzling to me, though, what mechanism the neuron might use to limit the timeframe in which it will recognize a change in the sum of its input voltage...