Taro Furukawa

Synaptic interaction at the mauthner cell of goldfish.

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the synaptic interaction at the Mauthner cell of goldfish. The Mauthner cells, located one on each side in the medulla, are neurons that give rise to these large axons. In the upper trace, recorded extracellularly from the vicinity of the axon hillock, spike potential appears as a negative deflection of a verp large size. In the lower trace, recorded intracellularly from the soma, the action potential appears as a positive spike. This spike potential, about 40 mV, is much smaller than usually observed in other neurons. These special relationships between extra- and intracellularly recorded spikes may be attributable to the fact that the area of M cell membrane that takes part actively in spike generation is limited to a small part near the axon hillock and to the fact that the membrane time constant of the cell is very short. The existence of a special group of large fibers in the nerve from the sacculus seems to suggest that fibers that terminate with club endings on the lateral dendrite would be a direct extension of these large fibers.