In vitro electrophysiological study of spontaneous activity in neonatal mouse vestibular ganglion neurons during development.

Spontaneous discharges from vestibular ganglion neurons have been studied in mice between 0 and 10 days in freshly isolated in vitro preparations. The vestibular ganglion neurons were electrophysiologically active at birth with irregular activities. From the 3rd day. the activities could be divided into irregular and regular discharging units based on the coefficient of variation of their interspike intervals. This study provides two criteria for maturation of vestibular activities: a decreasing number of irregular units with age and an increase of the spontaneous discharge frequencies.