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. 1996 Jan 15;490(Pt 2):319–324. doi: 10.1113/jphysiol.1996.sp021146

Control of action potential propagation by intracellular Ca2+ in cultured rat dorsal root ganglion cells.

C Lüscher 1, P Lipp 1, H R Lüscher 1, E Niggli 1
PMCID: PMC1158671  PMID: 8821131

Abstract

1. To assess the role of intracellular Ca2+ in action potential (AP) propagation, whole-cell recordings of cultured dorsal root ganglion (DRG) cells were carried out while Ca2+ was simultaneously measured with a laser-scanning confocal microscope. 2. Flash photolytic liberation of a Ca2+ buffer during trains of APs which partly failed to invade the DRG cell body immediately lowered intracellular Ca2+ and restored safe AP propagation. Furthermore, the speed of the propagated AP was reduced considerably when intracellular Ca2+ was increased by flash photolysis of caged Ca2+. 3. Both results suggest that intracellular Ca2+ regulates the safety factor for AP propagation and may thus provide a control mechanism for synaptic integration, which acts pre- as well as postsynaptically.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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