Action potential generation articles from across Nature Portfolio

In-depth analysis of extracellular waveforms from freely-moving mice identifies their source and properties, offering widespread implications for how to interpret and understand neural signals captured with extracellular probes.

Techniques for tagging active neurons with high spatiotemporal precision are limited. Here the authors report soma-targeted CalLight (ST-Cal-Light) which selectively converts somatic calcium rise triggered by action potentials into gene expression, and generate a conditional ST-Cal-Light knock-in mouse.

Most neurons in the nematode C. elegans communicate in an analog manner. Here, the authors demonstrate that enteric motor neurons can fire all-or-none action potentials, and that this digital communication is important for defecation.

A new biotinylation-based approach identifies previously unknown cell surface proteins of the axonal initial segment (AIS) and shows a role for contactin-1 in assembly of the AIS extracellular matrix.

Akiko Hayashi-Takagi discusses the discovery of dendritic ‘NMDA spikes’ in 2000 and its transformation of our understanding of neural processing.

Kv3 channels enable neurons to fire at very high frequencies (>100 Hz) which is fundamental to brain development and our ability to make sense of the world at large. Cryo-EM and structure-function studies by Chi et al. now uncover Kv3 channel gating mechanisms and support new precision medicine approaches for CNS diseases.

In stellate cell axons, axon potential width is determined in a synapse-specific manner by the compartmentalized clustering of Kv3 channels.