Take the 2-minute tour ×  I picture a neuron as having multiple
trees of dendrites attached to the cell body with a single axon
leaving the cell body. I believe the cell body near the axon
root makes the decision to fire or not fire an action potential.
• If the neuron has both excitatory and inhibitory synapses in
the dendrite trees, how do these communicate to the cell body?
• Does something like an action potential get transmitted down
the dendritic trees to the cell body?    • What is the
difference between the excitatory and inhibitory signals that
are transmitted?  share|improve this question add comment  2
Answers  up vote 3 down vote accepted  From your comment to
nico's good answer, it seems that your question is really about
how synaptic potentials propagate through dendrites.
Canonically, synaptic potentials travel passively along
membranes and is described by cable theory. The cable equation
describes how the voltage will change over time and space along
a cable. The theory was originally d