Comb models for transport along spiny dendrites

Abstract

This chapter is a contribution in the "Handbook of Applications of Chaos Theory" ed. by Prof. Christos H Skiadas. The chapter is organized as follows. First we study the statistical properties of combs and explain how to reduce the effect of teeth on the movement along the backbone as a waiting time distribution between consecutive jumps. Second, we justify an employment of a comb-like structure as a paradigm for further exploration of a spiny dendrite. In particular, we show how a comb-like structure can sustain the phenomenon of the anomalous diffusion, reaction-diffusion and L\'evy walks. Finally, we illustrate how the same models can be also useful to deal with the mechanism of ta translocation wave / translocation waves of CaMKII and its propagation failure. We also present a brief introduction to the fractional integro-differentiation in appendix at the end of the chapter.