Background
Electrical stimulation of neuronal tissue has been widely used in laboratory research and in the treatment of neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease, essential tremor and dystonia. During stimulation, cells are polarized by the electrically-induced transmembrane potential, and the electric field is re-distributed by the presence of the cell. Previous studies have separately studied each aspect of this interaction. The electrically-induced transmembrane potential has been computed by various modeling works with various cell shapes, cell-field orientations, and field designs. The electrical field distribution has also been extensively studied. How do cell-field interactions influence the efficiency of electrical stimulation? To answer this question, we have developed a simple spherical cell model under uniform DC electrical field stimulation.