Comment on "Energy and information in Hodgkin-Huxley neurons"

TL;DR

This paper critiques a previous study on Hodgkin-Huxley neuron energy consumption, proposing an alternative power expression that results in positive energy values and aligns better with physical expectations.

Contribution

It introduces a new formulation for calculating energy consumption in Hodgkin-Huxley neurons, addressing issues of negative energy transfer in prior models.

Findings

The new power expression yields positive energy consumption values.

Model calculations show improved physical consistency.

Comparison with previous work highlights the advantages of the proposed method.

Abstract

In a recent paper [A. Moujahid, A. d'Anjou, F. J. Torrealdea and F. Torrealdea, Phys. Rev. E {\bf 83}, 031912 (2011)], the authors have calculated the energy consumed in firing neurons by using the Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) model. The energy consumption rate adopted for the HH model yields a {\it negative} energy consumption meaning an energy transfer from an HH neuron to a source which is physically strange, although they have interpreted it as a biochemical energy cost. I propose an alternative expression for the power consumption which leads to a {\it positive} energy consumed in an HH neuron, presenting some model calculations which are compared to those in their paper.