Excitability of the Clay model for squid giant axon

The squid giant axon is the canonical experimental membrane prototype for the study of action potential generation. This work is concerned with Clay’s model for this preparation, which implements the nonlinear dependence of sodium and potassium currents on voltage, a multicompartmental description of sodium channel kinetics that takes into account the dependence between activation and inactivation, revised potassium activation function, and potassium accumulation in the axoplasm and its uptake by glial cells. This model accounts better than the standard Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) model for the response of squid giant axons to various stimuli. We systematically compare the responses of the Clay model and the standard HH model to pulse-like and constant current stimuli. We also analyze hybrid models that combine features from both models. These studies reveal that the differences between the sodium currents account for the main difference between the two models, namely the lower excitability of the Clay model.