Layer V pyramidal cells of the somatosensory cortex operate with two spike initiation zones. Sub-threshold depolarizations are strongly attenuated along the apical dendrite linking the somatic and distal dendritic spike initiation zones. Sodium action potentials, on the other hand, are actively back-propagating from the axon hillock into the apical tuft. There they can interact with local excit...

Plasticity at central synapses depends critically on the timing of presynaptic and postsynaptic action potentials. Key initial steps in synaptic plasticity involve the back-propagation of action potentials into the dendritic tree and calcium influx that depends nonlinearly on the action potential and synaptic input. These initial steps are now better understood. In addition, recent studies of p...

Solutions of sodium bicarbonate, calcium chloride, ethanol, acetic acid, and methanol, in concentrations ranging from 10−7 to 0.1 molar, were frozen under controlled conditions to measure the dependence of ice-spike formation on chemical impurities in water. The probability of ice-spike formation was plotted against molarity of solution to determine general trends for different solutes. The var...

BACKGROUND Epilepsy is one of the most important central nervous system disorder and 1% of the total world population suffers from this disorder which require a chronic drug treatment. Most of the researchers suggested that excessive calcium entry into neurons is the main triggering event in the initiation of epileptic discharges but the role of L type calcium channels has not been clarified in...

OBJECTIVE Inferring the times of sequences of action potentials (APs) (spike trains) from neurophysiological data is a key problem in computational neuroscience. The detection of APs from two-photon imaging of calcium signals offers certain advantages over traditional electrophysiological approaches, as up to thousands of spatially and immunohistochemically defined neurons can be recorded simul...

Action potentials (APs) in the mammalian brain are thought to represent the smallest unit of information transmitted by neurons to their postsynaptic targets. According to this view, neuronal signaling is all-or-none or digital. Increasing evidence suggests, however, that subthreshold changes in presynaptic membrane potential before triggering the spike also determines spike-evoked release of n...

Combining intracellular electrophysiology and multi-photon calcium imaging in vivo, we studied the relationship between calcium signals (sampled at 500-750 Hz) and spike output in principal neurons in the locust antennal lobe. Our goal was to determine whether the firing rate of individual neurons can be estimated in vivo with calcium imaging and, if so, to measure directly the accuracy and res...

Studies of mechanotransduction mediated by stress-sensitive ion channels generally focus on the site of force application to the cell. Here we show that global, cell-wide changes in cytoskeletal structure and mechanics can regulate mechanotransduction previously shown to be triggered by activation of the mechanosensitive calcium channel, polycystin-2, in the apical primary cilium of renal epith...