Coupling continuous neural networks to the electromagnetic field in nervous tissue

Abstract We present a microscopic approach for the coupling of cortical activity, as resulting from proper dipole currents of pyramidal neurons, to the electromagnetic field in extracellular fluid in presence of diffusion and Ohmic conduction. As a result, neural activity becomes represented by a continuous neural field equation, while an observation model for electric field potentials is obtained from the interaction of cortical dipole currents with charge density in non-resistive extracellular space as described by the Nernst-Planck equation.