Radiation Damage to Nervous System: Designing Optimal Models for Realistic Neuron Morphology in Hippocampus

¹ Laboratory of Radiation Biology, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, 141980, Dubna
² Division of Natural Sciences, National University of Mongolia, 210646, Ulaanbaatar

^* e-mail: batmunkh@jinr.ru

Published online: 14 February 2018

Abstract

The present study is focused on the development of optimal models of neuron morphology for Monte Carlo microdosimetry simulations of initial radiation-induced events of heavy charged particles in the specific types of cells of the hippocampus, which is the most radiation-sensitive structure of the central nervous system. The neuron geometry and particles track structures were simulated by the Geant4/Geant4-DNA Monte Carlo toolkits. The calculations were made for beams of protons and heavy ions with different energies and doses corresponding to real fluxes of galactic cosmic rays. A simple compartmental model and a complex model with realistic morphology extracted from experimental data were constructed and compared. We estimated the distribution of the energy deposition events and the production of reactive chemical species within the developed models of CA3/CA1 pyramidal neurons and DG granule cells of the rat hippocampus under exposure to different particles with the same dose. Similar distributions of the energy deposition events and concentration of some oxidative radical species were obtained in both the simplified and realistic neuron models.