Our recent results include statistical models of dendritic branching and outgrowth, their utilization in virtual neuron generating software, andtheir relation to underlying biophysical mechanisms with implications fordevelopmental theories: e.g., dendritic morphological homeostasis. A software tool for computationally evolving and testing on a parallel supercomputer an automated generator of realistic virtual neurons (CA1, CA3, dentate granule) written in C++ is currently being finished by Alexei Samsonovich. 

Neurons have significant potential for homeostatic regulation of a broad range of their functional features, from gene expression to synaptic excitability. We found that their structural features, such as dendritic morphology, may also be under intrinsic homeostatic control. Fluctuations in dendritic measures in one given portion of a neuron are systematically counterbalanced by the remaining dendrites in the same cell or its part. The finding is confirmed by numerical statistical analysis at multiple scales, across different brain regions and cell types. The work is published in PNAS:

• Samsonovich AV, Ascoli GA (2006) Morphological homeostasis in cortical dendrites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103 (5): 1569-1574.