Booker Sam A, Song Jie, Vida Imre
Institute of Integrative Neuroanatomy, NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence, Charité Universitätmedizin.
Institute of Integrative Neuroanatomy, NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence, Charité Universitätmedizin;
J Vis Exp. 2014 Sep 30(91):e51706. doi: 10.3791/51706.
GABAergic inhibitory interneurons play a central role within neuronal circuits of the brain. Interneurons comprise a small subset of the neuronal population (10-20%), but show a high level of physiological, morphological, and neurochemical heterogeneity, reflecting their diverse functions. Therefore, investigation of interneurons provides important insights into the organization principles and function of neuronal circuits. This, however, requires an integrated physiological and neuroanatomical approach for the selection and identification of individual interneuron types. Whole-cell patch-clamp recording from acute brain slices of transgenic animals, expressing fluorescent proteins under the promoters of interneuron-specific markers, provides an efficient method to target and electrophysiologically characterize intrinsic and synaptic properties of specific interneuron types. Combined with intracellular dye labeling, this approach can be extended with post-hoc morphological and immunocytochemical analysis, enabling systematic identification of recorded neurons. These methods can be tailored to suit a broad range of scientific questions regarding functional properties of diverse types of cortical neurons.
γ-氨基丁酸能抑制性中间神经元在大脑的神经回路中发挥着核心作用。中间神经元占神经元总数的一小部分（10%-20%），但表现出高度的生理、形态和神经化学异质性，这反映了它们功能的多样性。因此，对中间神经元的研究为深入了解神经回路的组织原则和功能提供了重要线索。然而，这需要采用综合的生理学和神经解剖学方法来选择和识别单个中间神经元类型。从转基因动物的急性脑片中进行全细胞膜片钳记录，这些转基因动物在中间神经元特异性标志物的启动子下表达荧光蛋白，为靶向特定中间神经元类型并对其内在和突触特性进行电生理学表征提供了一种有效方法。结合细胞内染料标记，这种方法可以通过事后的形态学和免疫细胞化学分析进行扩展，从而能够系统地识别记录的神经元。这些方法可以进行调整，以适应关于各种类型皮质神经元功能特性的广泛科学问题。
