Quantitative Analysis Linking Inner Hair Cell Voltage Changes and Postsynaptic Conductance Change: A Modelling Study

Table 1

Synapse morphology values.

Dimensions of the ribbon synapse	Value
Active zone radius	300 nm [20, 52]
Number of calcium channels	90 10 [43, 52, 53]
Calcium channels diameter	5 nm
Calcium channels spread	Gaussian or uniform
Ribbon (disk) [, , ]	40 nm, 166 nm, 127 nm
Ribbon (ellipsoid) [, , ]	100 nm, 166 nm, 127 nm
Ribbon (sphere) [, , ]	200 nm, 200 nm, 200 nm
Membrane-ribbon distance,	35 nm
Vesicles diameter	35 nm with a S.D. of 10 nm [9]
Membrane-vesicles bond distance	15 nm [24]
Free vesicle density	3000 vesicles m^−3

The radius describes the maximum distance possible for a calcium channel to exist from the centre of the simulation volume.
The variation in channel number is drawn from a uniform distribution.
This parameter controls the distribution pattern of the random allocation of channels from the centre of the synaptic ribbon as shown in Figure 2.
These dimensions describe a triaxial ellipsoid as shown in Figure 3. The first set describes disk shape ellipsoids found in photoreceptors [42]. The second set corresponds to the dimensions of an 8-week mouse [54] and the last set to a sphere shaped ellipsoid of an amphibian papilla [54].