Are Neurons Multifractals?

FERNANDEZ, E. BOLEA, J., ORTEGA G. Y LOUIS, E.

JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE METHODS

Año: 1999 vol. 89 p. 151 - 157

0165-0270

In the last few years, fractal analysis has found widespread application in the field of neuroscience and some investigators arestarting to use multifractals as a methodology that may provide information about the distribution of fractal dimensions inbiological structures. This is so, despite of the technical difficulties of multifractal analysis. In this paper, we investigate thetheoretical and practical aspects of studying and measuring the multifractal dimensions of neurons. Patterns were analysed bymeans of the standard box-counting method and a generalised sand-box method. Our results show that odd behaviours of Dqreported in the literature are a consequence of numerical deficiencies of the box-counting method and cannot be associated topeculiar geometrical characteristics of neurons. Instead the sand-box method gives a Dq which monotonically decreases with q.Although this result may indicate that neurons are multifractals, it is argued that size effects may in fact be the origin of thisapparent multifractality