Abstract
RECENT studies of the vertebrate endplate have shown that similar evaluations of the lifetime of the channels opened by acetylcholine (ACh) can be obtained by four different methods1: from the decay of the endplate current2; from the ACh noise spectrum3,4; from voltage-jump-induced relaxations5,6; and from single-channel recordings7. Similar agreement has been found in the study of other systems8–11. We now report on exceptionally slow voltage-jump-induced relaxations which we have observed in Aplysia neurones during the study of a slow inhibitory ACh response caused by a selective increase in potassium ion permeability12. We have found that the time constant of the voltage-jump-induced relaxations is larger than that of the decay of the synaptic currents. These relaxations present several peculiar properties, most of which can be explained by a kinetic scheme derived from the Hodgkin–Huxley model of the potassium system in the squid axon13.
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MARTY, A., ASCHER, P. Slow relaxations of acetylcholine-induced potassium currents in Aplysia neurones. Nature 274, 494–497 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1038/274494a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/274494a0
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