Publication Date:
1980-05-30
Description:
The cellular mechanisms underlying picrotoxin-induced convulsive activity were studied by using mouse spinal neurons growing in tissue culture. Picrotoxin-induced convulsive activity in most but not all of the cells studied. The activity could be inverted by polarizing to positive potentials and eliminated either by decreasing the ratio of calcium to magnesium or by applying tetrodotoxin. When applied locally to individual cells, picrotoxin lowered spike threshold and induced spontaneous firing in some but not all cells tested. The results suggest that picrotoxin-induced convulsive activity involves rapidly summating synaptic activity which may be evoked by high-frequency repetitive firing.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Barker, J L -- MacDonald, J F -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1980 May 30;208(4447):1054-6.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7375918" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Action Potentials/drug effects
;
Animals
;
Calcium/pharmacology
;
Cells, Cultured
;
Magnesium/pharmacology
;
Membrane Potentials/drug effects
;
Mice
;
Picrotoxin/*pharmacology
;
Seizures/*chemically induced
;
Spinal Cord/*drug effects/physiology
;
Synapses/*drug effects
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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