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1 Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA 2 Graduate Program in Neurosciences, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA 3 Department of Physics, Washington University, St Louis, MO 63130 USA
We characterized the electrophysiological properties of vibrissa motoneurones (vMNs) in rat. Intracellular recordings of vMNs in brainstem slices from animals aged P4 to P5 and P9 to P11, i.e. newborn animals, showed that the subthreshold membrane impedance has the form of passive decay. In particular, the impedance follows the 1/
f signature for long dendrites beyond a cut-off frequency of fc= 8 Hz. In contrast, the impedance has the form of a resonant filter in vMNs from slices prepared from animals aged P17 to P23, i.e. young animals. The resonance has a peak near 4 Hz and an amplitude of 1.2 times that at low frequencies (f
0.1Hz). The low frequency onset of the resonance is shown to depend on a hyperpolarization-activated depolarizing current, Ih. This current functions as a high-pass filter. The high frequency cut-off of the resonance results from passive decay in long dendrites, similar to the case with newborn animals but with fc= 20Hz. In addition to a resonance in subthreshold properties, an enhanced resonance in spiking is observed in young as opposed to newborn animals. The transition from solely passive decay in vMNs from newborn animals to resonance in young animals coincides with the onset of whisking. Further, the width of the resonance encompasses the 4–15Hz range of exploratory whisking. Nonetheless, it remains to be shown if there is a causal relation between the regulation of currents in vMNs and the onset of whisking. In particular, we further observed that the membrane impedance of hypoglossal motoneurones from both newborn and young animals exhibits a subthreshold resonance that also peaks near 4Hz. The amplitude of this resonance increases from 1.1 to 1.4 times that at low frequencies in newborn versus young animals. We conjecture that resonance properties in vibrissa, hypoglossal, and potentially other motoneurones, may serve to transiently and purposely synchronize different orofacial behaviours.
(Received 23 December 2003;
accepted after revision 30 January 2004;
first published online 6 February 2004)
Corresponding author D. Kleinfeld: Department of Physics and Graduate Program in Neurosciences, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. Email: dk{at}physics.ucsd.edu
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