We investigated the postsynaptic responses of neurons of the rat pontine nuclei (PN) by performing intracellular recordings in parasagittal slices of the pontine brain stem. Postsynaptic potentials (PSPs) were evoked by brief (0.1 ms) negative current pulses (10-250 microA) applied to either the cerebral peduncle or the pontine tegmentum. First, excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) could ...

1. Dual intracellular recordings were made from synaptically coupled pyramidal cell-to-interneurone pairs (n = 5) of the cat visual cortex in vitro. Pre- and postsynaptic neurones were labelled with biocytin, followed by correlated light and electron microscopic analysis to determine all sites of synaptic interaction. 2. Pyramidal neurones in layers II-III elicited monosynaptic EPSPs in three d...

There is considerable debate as to the relative importance, for cortical control of upper limb movements, of direct cortico-motoneuronal (CM) versus indirect, propriospinal transmission of corticospinal excitation to cervical motoneurons. In the cat, which has no CM connections, a significant proportion of corticospinal excitation reaches forelimb motoneurons via a system of C(3)-C(4) propriosp...

Neurons encode information and communicate via action potentials, which are generated following the summation of synaptic events. It is commonly assumed that action potentials reset the membrane potential completely, allowing another round of synaptic integration to begin. We show here that the conductances underlying the action potential act instead as a variable reset of synaptic integration....

Recent experimental evidence shows that cellular connectivity in the brain is non-random. More specifically, bidirectional connections between pairs of excitatory neurons are predominantly found when neurons connect by short-term facilitating synapses. For this type of synapses, excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) transiently increase upon repeated presynaptic activation. On the contrary...

Although a large number of AroA enzymes (EPSPS: 5-enopyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase) have been identified, cloned, and tested for glyphosate resistance, only two AroA variants, derived from Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain CP4 and Zea mays, have been utilized to produce the commercial glyphosate-resistant crops. Here, we have used a PCR-based twostep DNA synthesis method to synthesize an...

Experimental evidence has shown that in some neuron types, such as hippocampal CA1 neurons, distally generated excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) are scaled up in amplitude compared to more proximally generated EPSPs such that EPSP magnitudes at the soma are approximately equal regardless of the dendritic location of origin. Using an equivalent cable model neuron, we show that a particu...