Methods for physiological investigations of vestibular neurons in mouse brainstem slices.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 100
Description: The vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) is crucial to vision because it stabilizes gaze when the head is in motion. Interneurons in the medial vestibular nuclei (MVN) are a very important part of this reflex circuitry not only because they are the site of integration of incoming vestibular information but also because they are the projection site of this information to the motoneurons that drive the appropriate gaze stabilizing eye movements. Filters exist in the VOR circuitry but the sites and mechanisms of these filters remain unknown. One possibility is that short-term plasticity (STP) at the synapses between the primary vestibular afferents and the second order vestibular neurons in the MVN contributes to frequency filtering. For future studies of signal transformation at the synapse between primary vestibular afferents and MVN interneurons, I assembled and tested an electrophysiological apparatus capable of performing whole-cell patch clamp techniques on mouse brainstem slices.
Notes: Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-02, page: 0769.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

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