The electrical activity of biological neuron stems from the time-varying coupling of electromagnetic fields inside and outside the cell membrane, and the directional migration of ions across the membrane. Therefore, a physically motivated circuit-level emulation of nonlinear ion-channel currents can facilitate the analysis of selected electrical activity features of neurons. This work presents a Josephson Junctions (JJ) based ion channel neuron model at the circuit level, where a JJ branch is employed to emulate the nonlinear conductance of an effective ion-channel branch in the neuronal equivalent circuit. The capacitance characteristics of the cell membrane are simulated using capacitors. The nonlinear dynamic model of the neuron is developed by applying Kirchhoff’s laws. Through dynamic analysis and numerical simulation of the model, the firing patterns of this neuron under different external stimuli and external magnetic fields are studied. The results show that this model could reproduce selected periodic and chaotic firing-like dynamical patterns. Moreover, the model is further examined using analog circuit emulation and DSP implementation. Therefore, the ion channel neuron model based on JJ can emulate selected nonlinear ion-channel-current effects and firing dynamics at a phenomenological circuit level, providing a new circuit-level modeling approach for neuromorphic hardware design.
- Open Access
- Article
- Kailong Zhu,
- Feifei Yang *
Author Information
Received: 15 Aug 2026 | Revised: 04 Sep 2026 | Accepted: 30 Sep 2026 | Published: 15 Oct 2026
Abstract
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