The functionality of extracellular diffusion in electrical neural processing

The functionality of extracellular diffusion (ECD) in electrical neural processing is investigated. ECD assumes that the cells surrounding neurons maintains a potential, which contributes significantly to synaptic processing. This work will demonstrate that ECD produces a nonsynaptic network between synaptic cartridges. In considering the influence of ECD on synaptic transmissions, it will be shown that the difference between synaptic and extracellular potentials reduces the background potential present in the original signals. The changes to the synaptic potential are of sufficient magnitude to reduce the driving potential at synapses in adjacent cartridges resulting in on-center/off-surround response to a spot of light.