Derivation of cable equation by multiscale analysis for a model of myelinated axons (Q2284910)

The focus of the authors is on an elliptic system with nonlinear dynamic interface conditions that arises in electrocardiology and cellular electrophysiology among others. They derive a one-dimensional cable model for the electric potential propagation along an axon. Under suitable scaling of the myelin sheath and so on, they find a critical scaling with respect to the small parameter \(\varepsilon\) which leads to the occurrence of an additional potential in the homogenized nonlinear cable equation. The main challenge is the dealing with the Hodgkin-Huxley nonlinearity in the model.