Graded Potential

The inputs to a neuron are weak electrical signals, called graded potentials, which stimulate and travel through the dendrites of the receiving neuron (Levitan & Kaczmarek, 1991).  These signals degrade over time and distance travelled, but their cumulative effect (when they are summed in the soma of a cell) is capable of instigating an action potential.  The notion of summing graded potentials is equivalent to the connectionist notion of a processor summing its input signals (i.e. computing its net input function) prior to computing internal activity (Dawson, 2004).

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