I have just uploaded an incomplete draft of chapter 6, "Spike initiation with an initial segment". This chapter deals with how spikes are initiated in most vertebrate neurons (and also some invertebrate neurons), where there is a hotspot of excitability close to a large soma. This situation has a number of interesting implications which make spike initiation quite different from the situation investigated by Hodgkin and Huxley, that of stimulating the middle of an axon. Most of the chapter describes the theory that I have developed to analyze this situation, called "resistive coupling theory" because the axonal hotspot is resistively coupled to the soma.

The chapter is currently unfinished, because a few points require a little more research, which we have not finished. The presentation is also a bit more technical than I would like, so this is really a draft. I wanted nonetheless to release it now, as I have not uploaded a chapter for a while and it could be some time before the chapter is finished.