Whole-cell recording techniques were used to characterize voltage-gated membrane currents in neonatal rat olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) in cell culture. Mature ORNs were identified in culture by their characteristic bipolar morphology, by retrograde labeling techniques, and by olfactory marker protein (OMP) immunoreactivity. ORNs did not have spontaneous activity, but fired action potential...

In delayed match-to-sample tasks in monkeys, recordings from some neurons in prefrontal cortex (PFC) in vivo show sustained increases in the firing rate during the delay period between the stimulus onset and the response. The performance on the task is impaired when the dopamine levels in the PFC are either too low or too high, suggesting that dopaminergic modulation is involved in encoding the...

Layer II/III of rat perirhinal cortex (PR) contains numerous late-spiking (LS) pyramidal neurons. When injected with a depolarizing current step, these LS cells typically delay spiking for one or more seconds from the onset of the current step and then sustain firing for the duration of the step. This pattern of delayed and sustained firing suggested a specific computational role for LS cells i...