[eng] Shape and morphology of dendritic trees suggest that these structures are actively involved in processing the information they receive, enabling neurons to perform a large variety of computations
previously believed to be possible only at a network level. The ability of dendrites to perform
computations is believed to emerge in the presence of active conductances which can boost or
suppress the effect of incoming input in a non-linear fashion. The secrets of dendritic computations are believed to be hidden into these non-linearities. However, it is still unknown whether
passive properties of dendrites alone play a role in their formation. In this work, we will focus
on a reduced model, a simplified Leaky Integrate-and-Fire (LIF) somatic compartment equipped
with passive dendritic processes. Our aim is to investigate whether a ramified dendritic tree, in the
absence of active conductances, is able to produce different responses to the same patterns of stimulation respect to an equivalent cylinder displayng the same electrical properties. The results of
this work may shed light on the functional role of ramification in dendritic information processing.