Cable cell morphology

In morphologically detailed simulations of neurons, the cell is modelled as a set of round electrical cables, which have, among others properties, capacitances and resistances. These can in turn be expressed as a system of partial differential equations which can be solved to compute a current or voltage. The geometry of the biological cell is approximated as a tree of cable segments, which is a morphology in Arbor nomenclature.

Let’s first define the building blocks out of which we can construct a proper definition for a morphology.

Note

In certain cases, a second term appears in the definitions, where the second term corresponds to the associated type in Python and C++. The m prefix, short for morphology, avoids overly generic type names.

point
mpoint

A point in 3D space has three coordinates. In Arbor, we add a fourth coordinate: radius. The mpoint thus represents the centre of a cable and the radius represents the cross-sectional radius of the cable.

The properties of a point, in the context of cable cell morphologies.

Field

Type

Description

x

real

x coordinate of centre of cable (μm).

y

real

y coordinate of centre of cable (μm).

z

real

z coordinate of centre of cable (μm).

radius

real

cross sectional radius of cable (μm).

segment
msegment

A segment is a frustum (cylinder or truncated cone), with the centre and radius at each end defined by a pair of points. In other words, in Arbor the radius between two points is interpolated linearly, resulting in either a cylinder (equal radii) or truncated cone (differing radii), centred at the line through the pair of points.

The properties of a segment.

Field

Type

Description

prox

mpoint

the centre and radius of the proximal end.

dist

mpoint

the centre and radius of the distal end.

tag

integer

tag meta-data, can be used to classify segments of the same kind (ex: soma, dendrite, but also arbitrary use-defined groups)

../_images/term_segments.svg

Four segments arranged head to toe.

branch

A branch is the longest possible unbranched sequence of segments.

../_images/term_branch.svg

A branch corresponding to the previous segments.

location
mlocation

A location is not a point in 3D space, but a point in the cable cell morphology’s coordinate system. It is defined by a specific branch and a position along the length of the branch.

The properties of mlocation.

Field

Type

Description

branch

integer

id of the branch

pos

real (0≤pos≤1)

position along the length of the branch

cable
mcable

A cable is a subset of a branch, and is thus defined as between two locations on a particular branch.

../_images/term_cable.svg

A cable shown in black is defined as a section located between 0.2 and 0.8 of the length of the previous branch.

tag

A tag is an integer label on every segment, which can be used to define disjoint regions on cells. The meaning of tag values are not fixed in Arbor, however we typically use tag values that correspond to SWC structure identifiers.

With these definitions, we can create proper definitions for morphology and segment tree.

Note

NEURON uses different nomenclature for segments and branches. The segments (alternatively referred to as compartments) that NEURON uses for control over discretisation (by assigning nseg segments per section) most closely correspond to control volumes in Arbor. Arbor uses truncated cones to represent branches and segments, Neuron uses a weighted average radius to create cylinders (see “trapezoidal integration” in the Neuron documentation.).

Segment trees

segment tree
segment_tree

A segment tree describes a morphology as a set of segments and their connections, designed to support both the diverse descriptions of cell morphologies (e.g. SWC, NeuroLicida, NeuroML), and tools that iteratively construct cell morphologies (e.g. L-system generators, interactive cell-builders).

Segment trees comprise a sequence of segments starting from at least one root segment, together with a parent-child adjacency relationship where a child segment is distal to its parent. Branches in the tree occur where a segment has more than one child. Furthermore, a segment can not have more than one parent. In this manner, neuron morphologies are modelled as a tree, where cables that represent dendrites and axons can branch, but branches can not rejoin.

The following definitions are used to refer to segments in a segment tree:

root

Segments at the root or start of the tree. A non-empty tree must have at least one root segment, and the first segment will always be a root.

parent

Each segment has one parent, except for root segments which have mnpos as their parent.

  • The id of a segment is always greater than the id of its parent.

  • The ids of segments on the same unbranched sequence of segments do not need to be contiguous.

child

A segment’s children are the segments that have the segment as their parent.

terminal

A segment with no children. Terminals lie at the end of dendritic trees or axons.

fork

A segment with more than one child. The distal end of a fork segment are fork points, where a cable splits into two or more branches.

  • Arbor allows more than two branches at a fork point.

The following segment tree models a soma as a cylinder, a branching dendritic tree and an axon with an axonal hillock. The segments are coloured according to their tag, which in this case are SWC structure identifiers: tag 1 coloured pink for soma; tag 2 coloured grey for axon; tag 3 coloured light blue for basal dendrites.

../_images/label_seg.svg

A ten segment cable cell, with soma (pink), axon (grey) and dendrite (light blue). Python code to generate this cable cell is in the segment_tree documentation here.

  • The tree is composed of 11 segments (1 soma, 2 axon, 8 dendrite).

  • The proximal ends of segments 0 and 9 (the soma and axon hillock respectively) are attached to the root of the tree.

  • Segment 2 is a fork, with segments 3 and 5 as children.

  • Segment 5 is a fork, with segments 6 and 7 as children.

  • There is also a fork at the root, with segments 0 and 9 as children.

  • Segments 4, 6, 8 and 10 are terminal segments.

In the example above there are no gaps between segments, however it is possible for segments to be detached, where the proximal end of a segment is not coincident with the distal end of its parent. The following morphology has gaps between the start of the axon and dendritic tree and the soma segment to which they attach.

../_images/detached_seg.svg

Note

In Arbor, segments are always treated as though they are connected directly to their parents, regardless of whether ends where they attached are collocated.

Gaps are frequently the result of simplifying the soma, whereby the complex geometry of a soma is represented using a cylinder or sphere (spheres are represented by a cylinder with length and diameter equal to that of the sphere in simulation tools like Arbor and NEURON).

A gap between a cylindrical soma and segments attached to it does not mean that the segmentation is invalid. To illustrate why this can occur, consider a potato-shaped soma modelled with a cylinder of the same surface area. If the cell description places the first segment of a dendritic tree where it attaches to the “potato soma”, it is unlikely to be collocated with an end of the simplified soma. The cell model will correctly represent the location and dimension of the dendritic tree, while preserving the soma surface area with a simplified cylindrical model.

Because Arbor supports tapered segments (where radius varies linearly along a segment) it is possible to represent more complex soma shapes using multiple segments, for example the segmentation below uses 4 segments to model the soma.

../_images/stacked_seg.svg

Morphology

morphology

Morphologies in Arbor are modelled as a set of one dimensional cables of variable radius, joined together to form a tree. Only cable cells support custom morphologies in Arbor. Morphologies can be created by loading a file with a cell description, or by manually constructing one from a segment tree.

A segment tree and a morphology can both describe the exact same cable cell geometry, and if you create a morphology from a segment tree, they do! The two descriptions differ in two ways:

  1. in their ‘morphological coordinate system’: a segment tree is defined in terms of connections between points in 3D space, while a morphology is defined in terms of connections between branches. A segment tree makes it easy to recreate a cell from image data, because that is usually done by setting points in space and assigning a cable radius. A morphology makes accessing locations in terms of the cable cells shape easy: “We’ve placed the clamp on the midway point of the 53rd branch of cell B.” More on placement later.

  2. the fact that angles between branches are not defined in morphologies but are in segment trees, or, equivalently, in morphologies the branching points have no specific position in space, other than in relation to a specific distance from other branching points through any branch that links them.

Every segment tree can be used to generate a unique morphology, which derives and enumerates branches from the segments. The branches of a morphology are unbranched cables, composed of one or more segments, where:

  • the first (proximal) segment of the branch is either a root or the child of fork segment;

  • the last (distal) segment of the branch is either a fork or terminal segment;

  • branches are enumerated in order, following the order of the ids of their proximal segments in the segment tree.

When constructed in this manner, the following statements are true for the branches and their enumeration:

  • Because a branch must have root, fork or terminal ends, a branch can not be sub-divided into two or more branches, and hence there is only one possible set of branches that can be derived from a segment tree.

  • Because branches are enumerated according to the id of their proximal segments, there is only one branch enumeration representation for a segment tree.

  • However, it is possible for two topologically equivalent morphologies to be derived from different segment trees (e.g. two trees with the same segments, however different valid segment enumerations), and potentially have different branch numbers.

  • Every valid segment tree can be used to construct a valid morphology.

Note

Because two topologically-equivalent morphologies may have different segment and branch numbering, it is important that model descriptions should avoid referring to branches or segments by id. This should only be relaxed when the configuration of branches in a particular morphology is known exactly and unambiguously.

To illustrate branch generation, consider the first segment tree example on this page, which is illustrated along with its branches below.

../_images/label_morph.svg

Left, the same 10 segment cable cell seen before. On the right, the associated morphology and branches. Note that the root point of the soma is always the start (and possibly end) of a branch. The code used to generate this morphology is in the segment_tree python documentation.

The first branch contains the soma and the first two segments of the dendritic tree. There are four more branches in the dendritic tree, and one representing the two segments of the axon.

Note, that though it is possible to create an unbranched sequence of segments composed of the axon, soma and first two segments in the dendritic tree, this sequence is decomposed as two branches because segments 0 (soma) and 9 (first segment in axon) are at the root of the tree.

Similarly to segments, the branches in a morphology have a parent child relationship. Every branch has one parent, with branches at the root of the tree having the placeholder parent index mnpos. Segments can have any non-negative number of children, however by nature of their construction, no branch can have only one child: a branch has either no children, or two or more children. The parent-child information and segments for the morphology are summarized:

Branch

Parent

Children

Segments

0

mnpos

[1, 2]

[0, 1, 2]

1

0

[]

[3, 4]

2

0

[3, 4]

[5]

3

2

[]

[6]

4

2

[]

[7, 8]

5

mnpos

[]

[9, 10]

Gaps between segments do not influence branch creation, hence branches can contain gaps between segments. Take the example of a morphology with a gap between the soma and the axon and dendritic trees:

../_images/detached_morph.svg

The soma is part of branch 0, despite the gap:

Branch

Parent

Children

Segments

0

mnpos

[1, 2]

[0, 1, 2]

1

0

[]

[3, 4]

2

0

[3, 4]

[5]

3

2

[]

[6]

4

2

[]

[7, 8]

5

mnpos

[]

[9]

Tag information is not used when creating branches, so that a branch can contain segments with different tags, which in our examples gives branches that contain both soma and dendrite segments. For example, when building the soma from multiple segments:

../_images/stacked_morph.svg

The morphology has the same number of branches as the other examples, with multiple soma and dendrite segments in branch 0.

Branch

Parent

Children

Segments

0

mnpos

[1, 2]

[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

1

0

[]

[6, 7]

2

0

[3, 4]

[8]

3

2

[]

[9]

4

2

[]

[10, 11]

5

mnpos

[]

[12, 13]

Note

Arbor provides a consistent representation of morphologies with no special cases for concepts like magical soma branches, in order to build reproducible and consistent model descriptions.

Users of NEURON who are used to creating a separate soma section that is always the first section in a morphology should not worry that the soma is not treated as a special branch in the examples above.

The soma in the examples above can be referred to in later model building phases, for example when describing the distribution of ion channels, by using referring to all parts of the cell with tag 1.

Note

This representation of the cell morphology in terms of branches is what Arbor uses to create a cable cell, and it is how Arbor view’s the cell’s geometry and refers to it internally. Regions and locsets formed on the cell, are eventually represented either as subsets of branches of the morphology, or exact locations on branches of the morphology.

Once the morphology is formed from a segment tree, the specific segments are no longer of much use for the user and it is better to think of the cell structure as Arbor does: in terms of branches.

Examples

Here we present a series of morphology examples of increasing complexity. The examples use the Python API are two-dimensional, with the z-dimension set to zero.

Example 1: Spherical cell

A simple model of a cell as a sphere can be modelled using a cylinder with length and diameter equal to the diameter of the sphere, which will have the same surface area (disregarding the area of the cylinder’s circular ends).

Here a cylinder of length and diameter 4 μm is used to represent a spherical cell with a radius of 2 μm, centred at the origin.

tree = arbor.segment_tree()
tree.append(mnpos, mpoint(-2, 0, 0, 2), mpoint(2, 0, 0, 2), tag=1)
morph = arbor.morphology(tree)
../_images/sphere_morph.svg

The morphology is a single cylinder segment (left) that forms branch 0 (right).

Example 2: Unbranched cable

Consider a cable of length 10 μm, with a radius that tapers from 1 μm to 0.5 μm at the proximal and distal ends respectively. This can be described using a single segment.

tree = arbor.segment_tree()
tree.append(mnpos, mpoint(0, 0, 0, 1), mpoint(10, 0, 0, 0.5), tag=3)
morph = arbor.morphology(tree)
../_images/branch_morph1.svg

A tapered cable with one cable segment (left), generates a morphology with one branch (right).

The radius of a cable segment varies linearly between its end points. To define an unbranched cable with irregular radius and “squiggly” shape, use multiple segments to build a piecewise linear reconstruction of the cable geometry. This example starts and ends at the same locations as the previous, however it is constructed from 4 distinct cable segments:

tree = arbor.segment_tree()
tree.append(mnpos, mpoint( 0.0,  0.0,  0.0, 1.0), mpoint( 3.0,  0.2,  0.0, 0.8), tag=1)
tree.append(0,     mpoint( 3.0,  0.2,  0.0, 0.8), mpoint( 5.0, -0.1,  0.0, 0.7), tag=2)
tree.append(1,     mpoint( 5.0, -0.1,  0.0, 0.7), mpoint( 8.0,  0.0,  0.0, 0.6), tag=2)
tree.append(2,     mpoint( 8.0,  0.0,  0.0, 0.6), mpoint(10.0,  0.0,  0.0, 0.5), tag=3)
morph = arbor.morphology(tree)
../_images/branch_morph2.svg

The morphology is an unbranched cable comprised of 4 cable segments, coloured according to their tags: tag 1 pink; tag 2 grey; tag 3 light blue (left). The four segments form one branch (right).

Gaps are possible between two segments. The example below inserts a 1 μm gap between the second and third segments of the previous morphology. Note that Arbor will ignore the gap, effectively joining the segments together, such that the morphology with the gap is the same as that without.

tree = arbor.segment_tree()
tree.append(mnpos, mpoint( 0.0,  0.0,  0.0, 1.0), mpoint(3.0,  0.2,  0.0, 0.8), tag=1)
tree.append(0,     mpoint( 3.0,  0.2,  0.0, 0.8), mpoint(5.0, -0.1,  0.0, 0.7), tag=2)
tree.append(1,     mpoint( 7.0, -0.1,  0.0, 0.7), mpoint(10.0, 0.0,  0.0, 0.6), tag=2)
tree.append(2,     mpoint(10.0,  0.0,  0.0, 0.6), mpoint(12.0, 0.0,  0.0, 0.5), tag=3)
morph = arbor.morphology(tree)
../_images/branch_morph3.svg

There is a gap between segment 1 and segment 2 (left), and there is a single branch (right).

The radius of a cable is piecewise linear, with discontinuities permitted at the interface between segments. The next example adds a discontinuity to the previous example between segments 3 and 4, where the radius changes from 0.5 μm to 0.3 μm:

tree = arbor.segment_tree()
tree.append(mnpos, mpoint( 0.0,  0.0,  0.0, 1.0), mpoint( 3.0,  0.2,  0.0, 0.8), tag=1)
tree.append(0,     mpoint( 3.0,  0.2,  0.0, 0.8), mpoint( 5.0, -0.1,  0.0, 0.7), tag=2)
tree.append(1,     mpoint( 5.0, -0.1,  0.0, 0.7), mpoint( 8.0,  0.0,  0.0, 0.5), tag=2)
tree.append(2,     mpoint( 8.0,  0.0,  0.0, 0.3), mpoint(10.0,  0.0,  0.0, 0.5), tag=3)
morph = arbor.morphology(tree)
../_images/branch_morph4.svg

The resulting morphology has a step discontinuity in radius.

Example 3: Y-shaped cell

The simplest branching morphology is a cable that bifurcates into two branches, which we will call a y-shaped cell. In the example below, the first branch of the tree is a cable of length 10 μm with a a radius that tapers from 1 μm to 0.5 μm. The two child branches are attached to the end of the first branch, and taper from from 0.5 μm to 0.2 μm.

Note that only the distal point is required to describe the child segments, because the proximal end of each child segment has the same location and radius as the distal end of the parent.

tree = arbor.segment_tree()
tree.append(mnpos, mpoint( 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0), mpoint(10.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.5), tag= 3)
tree.append(0,     mpoint(15.0, 3.0, 0.0, 0.2), tag= 3)
tree.append(0,     mpoint(15.0,-3.0, 0.0, 0.2), tag= 3)
morph = arbor.morphology(tree)
../_images/yshaped_morph.svg

Example 4: Soma with branches

Now let’s look at a cell with a simple dendritic tree attached to a spherical soma. The spherical soma of radius 3 μm is modelled with a cylinder with length and diameter equal to 6 μm, which has the same surface area as the sphere.

tree = arbor.segment_tree()
tree.append(mnpos, mpoint(-3.0, 0.0, 0.0, 3.0), mpoint( 3.0, 0.0, 0.0, 3.0), tag=1)
tree.append(0, mpoint( 4.0, -1.0,  0.0, 0.6), mpoint(10.0,  -2.0,  0.0, 0.5), tag=3)
tree.append(1, mpoint(15.0, -1.0,  0.0, 0.5), tag=3)
tree.append(2, mpoint(18.0, -5.0,  0.0, 0.3), tag=3)
tree.append(2, mpoint(20.0,  2.0,  0.0, 0.3), tag=3)
morph = arbor.morphology(tree)
../_images/ysoma_morph1.svg

Note that branch 0 (right) is composed of segments 0, 1, and 2 (left).

The soma is the first segment, labelled with tag 1. The dendritic tree is a simple y-shaped tree composed of 4 segments, each labelled with tag 3. The first branch is composed of 3 segments: the soma segment and the first two segments in the dendritic tree because the segments have parent child ordering and no fork points.

Note

The first branch is derived directly from the topological relationship between the segments, and no special treatment is given to the soma. There is no need to treat segments with different tags (e.g. tags that we might associate with soma, axon, basal dendrite and apical dendrite) when defining geometric primitives like segments and branches, because they can later be referenced using region expressions.

Now we can attach another dendrite and an axon to the soma, to make a total of three cables attached to the soma (two dendrites and an axon). The dendrites are attached to the distal end of the soma (segment 0), so they have the 0 as their parent. The axon is attached to the proximal end of the soma, which is at the root of the tree, so it has mnpos as its parent. There are 7 branches generated from 10 segments, and soma segment is its own branch, because it has two children: the dendrites attached to its distal end.

../_images/ysoma_morph2.svg

Note

The discretisation process, which converts segments and branches into control volumes, will ignore gaps between segments in the input. The cell below, in which the dendrites and axon have been translated to remove any gaps, is equivalent to the previous example for the back end simulator.

Note that the dendrites are children of the soma segment, so they are coincident with the distal end of the soma, and the axon is translated to the proximal end of the soma segment because both it and the soma have mnpos as a parent. More generally, segments at the root of the tree are connected electrically at their proximal ends.

../_images/ysoma_morph3.svg

Editing morphologies

While a reified morphology cannot be edited – it is immutable by definition – the segment tree can be changed. If you need to make such modifications, first consider whether they should be stored in a file as this is often easier for tracking provenance and version history.

For the remaining cases, Arbor offers a limited suite of tools. First, most morphology loaders have a ‘raw’ variant (C++) or flag (Python), that loads a segment tree instead of a morphology. Segment trees are similarly immutable, but by traversing the existing tree and adding/pruning subtrees into a new tree changes are possible. From these edited trees, new morphologies can be formed.

Two common editing operations are provided

  • split_at(t, i) -> (l, r) Split a segment tree t into two subtrees l and r at a given segment id i. - r is the subtree of t that has the segment i at its root - l is t with the segment i and its children removed

    The id i must be a valid id in t or mnpos in which case l == t and r = {}.

  • join_at(t, i, o) -> j Given two segment trees t and o, attach o to t such that the segment in t identified by i is the parent of o. The id i must be valid in t and not mnpos (else t would have two root segments).

Note that join_at and split_at are inverse to each other.

A particular use-case for these operations is pruning a specific tag-region in the segment tree and replacing it with a surrogate model. This is e.g. commonly performed for the axon, known as axon-replacement. For this purpose, the function tag_roots allows to obtain the IDs of root segments of a a tag region. These IDs can then be used with split_at to split off subtrees and join_at to attach a surrogate subtree (with the same parent as the one split off).

Supported file formats

See the supported file formats.

Discretisation and CV policies

control volume
compartment

For the purpose of simulation, Arbor discretises cable cell morphologies into control volumes, or CVs. Discretising happens through a CV policy. The CVs are uniquely determined by a set of B mlocation boundary points. For each non-terminal point h in B, there is a CV comprising the points {xh ≤ x and ¬∃ y ∈ B s.t h < y < x}, where < and ≤ refer to the geometrical partial order of locations on the morphology. A fork point is owned by a CV if and only if all of its corresponding representative locations are in the CV.

‘Compartment’ is often used to refer to the substructure in cable cells; the ‘compartment’ in multi-compartment cells. A compartment is equivalent to a control volume. We avoid using ‘compartment’ to avoid potential confusion with segments or branches.

Note

In NEURON, discretisation is controlled through splitting a NEURON section into a number of NEURON segments or NEURON compartments (nseg, 1 by default). Note that a NEURON segment/compartment is not the same as an Arbor segment!

CV policy

Generating the set of boundary points used by the simulator (discretisation) is controlled by a CV policy. The default policy used to generate the set of boundary points is cv_policy_fixed_per_branch(1).

Specific CV policies are created by functions that take a region parameter that restrict the domain of applicability of that policy; this facility is useful for specifying differing discretisations on different parts of a cell morphology. When a CV policy is constrained in this manner, the boundary of the domain will always constitute part of the CV boundary point set.

cv_policy_single

Use one CV for each connected component of a region. When applied to the whole cell will generate single CV for the whole cell.

cv_policy_explicit

Define CV boundaries according to a user-supplied set of locations, optionally restricted to a region.

cv_policy_every_segment

Use every segment in the morphology to define CVs, optionally restricted to a region. Each fork point in the domain is represented by a trivial CV.

cv_policy_fixed_per_branch

For each branch in each connected component of the region (or the whole cell, if no region is specified), evenly distribute boundary points along the branch so as to produce an exact number of CVs per branch.

By default, CVs will terminate at branch ends. An optional flag cv_policy_flag::interior_forks can be passed to specify that fork points will be included in non-trivial, branched CVs and CVs covering terminal points in the morphology will be half-sized.

cv_policy_max_extent

As for cv_policy_fixed_per_branch, save that the number of CVs on any given branch will be chosen to be the smallest number that ensures no CV will have an extent on the branch longer than a user-provided CV length.

Composition of CV policies

CV policies can be combined with + and | operators. For two policies A and B, A + B is a policy which gives boundary points from both A and B, while A | B is a policy which gives all the boundary points from B together with those from A which do not within the domain of B. The domain of A + B and A | B is the union of the domains of A and B.

Reading CV policies from strings

CV policies can also be converted to and from strings, using an S-Expression-based DSL. Constructors are

  • (single <optional:region>)

  • (max-extent <double> <optional:region> <optional:flags>)

  • (fixed-per-branch <int> <optional:region> <optional:flags>)

  • (explicit <locset> <optional:region>)

with the obvious correspondences. The composition operators are

  • (join <cv-policy> <cv-policy> ...) equivalent to +

  • (replace <cv-policy> <cv-policy> ...) equivalent to |

and take arbitrary many policies.

API