OBJECT Tinnitus is an auditory phantom percept related to tonic and burst hyperactivity of the auditory system. Two parallel pathways supply auditory information to the cerebral cortex: the tonotopically organized lemniscal system, and the nontonotopic extralemniscal system, which fire in tonic and burst mode, respectively. Electrical cortex stimulation is a method capable of modulating activit...

Ambient GABA in the brain activates GABA(A) receptors to produce tonic inhibition. Membrane potential influences both GABA transport and GABA(A) receptors and could thereby regulate tonic inhibition. We investigated the voltage dependence of tonic currents in cultured rat hippocampal neurons using patch-clamp techniques. Tonic GABA(A) conductance increased with depolarization from 15 +/- 3 pS/p...

The extracellular space of the brain contains gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) that activates extrasynaptic GABA(A) receptors mediating tonic inhibition. The source of this GABA is uncertain: it could be overspill of vesicular release, non-vesicular leakage, reverse transport, dying cells or glia. Using a novel approach, we simultaneously measured phasic and tonic inhibitory currents and assessed...

A large body of work now shows the importance of GABAA receptor-mediated tonic inhibition in regulating CNS function. However, outside of pathological conditions, there is relatively little evidence that the magnitude of tonic inhibition is itself under regulation. Here we review the mechanisms by which tonic inhibition is known to be modulated, and outline the potential behavioral consequences...

Phasic and tonic inhibitions are two types of inhibitory activities involved in inhibitory processing in the CNS. In the spinal cord dorsal horn, phasic inhibition is mediated by both GABAergic and glycinergic inhibitory postsynaptic currents. In contrast to phasic inhibitory currents, using patch-clamp recording technique on spinal cord slices prepared from adult mice we revealed that tonic in...

Smooth muscle is unique in its ability to maintain force at low MgATP consumption. This property, called the latch state, is more prominent in tonic than phasic smooth muscle. Studies performed at the muscle strip level have suggested that myosin from tonic muscle has a greater affinity for MgADP and therefore remains attached to actin longer than myosin from phasic muscle, allowing for cross-b...