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Visually guided patch-clamp recording of spinal dorsal horn neuron's postsynaptic current evoked by primary afferent fiber

Wan Yehong, Wang Yuying, Dai Fei, Hu Sanjue

Institute of Neuroscience, The Fourth Military Medical University. Xi'an. Shaanxi 710033, China

Abstract

The authors describe here the procedures for using the gelatin half-embedding method to obtain thin spinal cord slices with attached dorsal roots and performing visually guided whole-cell patch-clamp recording of postsynaptic currents evoked by primary afferent fibers in rat spinal dorsal horn. A segment of spinal cord with attached dorsal roots was prepared and half-embedded in an agar block with 20% (w/v)gelatin. Thin spinal cord slices with attached dorsal roots were obtained with a vibratome and whole-cell patch-clamp configuration was established under the infrared observation. At the holding potential of -70 mV, spontaneous excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) and dorsal root stimulation-evoked EPSCs were recorded as inward currents.

Key words: patch-clamp technique;Excitatory postsynaptic current (EPSC);Inhibitory postsynaptic currents (IPSC);Primaryafferent synapse;Spine;Dorsal horn;Rat

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Citing This Article：

Wan Yehong, Wang Yuying, Dai Fei, Hu Sanjue. Visually guided patch-clamp recording of spinal dorsal horn neuron's postsynaptic current evoked by primary afferent fiber. Acta Physiol Sin 2004; 56 (4): (in Chinese with English abstract).