Action potentials and solitons

During the last decade, the notion of solitons has been mentioned in neuroscience related to the propagation of action potentials (AP).

In this paper, based on many studies in mathematical physics and neuroscience, the clear differences between the APs and solitons are summarised.

It is stressed that the physics of the emergence of APs and solitons is fundamentally different.

The numerical examples collected from earlier studies demonstrate the differences in the process of generation and interaction of corresponding waves explicitly.

It is also noted that although the longitudinal mechanical waves in biomembranes can be described by the Boussinesq-type equation, the time-scale of emerging solitons from an arbitrary initial excitation exceeds the time-scale of the usual AP existence considerably.