On the activation of a fasciculus of axons
Emmanuel Mandonnet, Olivier Pantz · 2011
Direct electrical stimulation of cortical and axonal areas is widely used for brain mapping of functional areas during intraparenchymatous resections. Direct access to the precise area activated by a given stimulation, is di cult to observe experimentally. The aim of this article is to present a numerical method to compute this area. As axonal fasciculus are made of a large number of axons, direct computations on the genuine geometry are out of reach. In consequence, we use a homogenization process allowing us to approximate the full microscopic heterogeneous system by a homogeneous macroscopic one. The obtained modeling is known as the bidomain model and has been previously used for the study of syncytial tissues. Numerical simulations are performed using a finite element method.