Directed intermittent search for a hidden target on a dendritic tree

Jay M. Newby, Paul C. Bressloff
2009 Physical Review E  
Motivated by experimental observations of active ͑motor-driven͒ intracellular transport in neuronal dendrites, we analyze a stochastic model of directed intermittent search on a tree network. A particle injected from the cell body or soma into the primary branch of the dendritic tree randomly switches between a stationary search phase and a mobile nonsearch phase that is biased in the forward direction. A ͑synaptic͒ target is presented somewhere within the tree, which the particle can locate if
more » ... it is within a certain range and in the searching phase. We approximate the moment generating function using Green's function methods. The moment generating function is then used to compute the hitting probability and conditional mean first passage time to the target. We show that in contrast to a previously explored finite interval case, there is a range of parameters for which a bidirectional search strategy is more efficient than a unidirectional one in finding the target.
doi:10.1103/physreve.80.021913 pmid:19792157 fatcat:36fkg5connggvls56b6yzclguy