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Hodgkin-Huxley 1952 Action Potential Validation

Validates HodgkinHuxleyNeuron against the original 1952 paper expectations.

Reference

Hodgkin, A.L. & Huxley, A.F. (1952). A quantitative description of membrane current and its application to conduction and excitation in nerve. J Physiol 117(4):500-544.

Model

C_m dv/dt = -g_Na m³h(v-E_Na) - g_K n⁴(v-E_K) - g_L(v-E_L) + I_ext

Standard parameters: g_Na=120, g_K=36, g_L=0.3, E_Na=50, E_K=-77, E_L=-54.4 mV.

Validated Properties (Kaggle run 2026-03-28)

Property Expected Measured Status
Resting potential -65 ± 5 mV -65.00 mV PASS
AP peak 20–60 mV 40.6 mV PASS
Spike width (half-max) 0.5–3.0 ms 1.46 ms PASS
m gate at peak > 0.8 0.894 PASS
h gate at peak < 0.4 0.355 PASS
n gate rises > n₀ 0.500 > 0.320 PASS
AHP < -65 mV -75.1 mV PASS
f-I monotonic increasing [6, 7, 8, 9] PASS
Subthreshold (I=1) 0 spikes 0 PASS

Euler Integration Notes

  • h gate at peak (0.355) is slightly above the continuous-model value (~0.2) due to Euler integration lag. This is expected with dt=0.01ms forward Euler.
  • I=3 µA/cm² (below HH rheobase ~6.3) can produce a single transient spike from initial conditions with Euler. Subthreshold test uses I=1 to avoid this.

Native Cross-Validation

Test Result
HodgkinHuxleyNeuron fires at I=10 4 spikes/50ms
HodgkinHuxleyNeuron resting potential -65.00 mV

Test Files

  • tests/test_hh_validation.py — pytest suite
  • benchmarks/results/phase1_validation_results.json — measured data