Topic: whole-cell patch clamp recordings

Recordings from neural populations can be biased towards cells that are spontaneously active, and it is often implicitly assumed that stimulus responses will be unrelated to spontaneous activity. To avoid such biases [1] performed blind whole-cell patch clamp recordings of olfactory bulb mitral cells. Intriguingly, these recordings revealed an inverse relationship between spontaneous and odor-evoked activity: cells that were highly active at baseline were often quiet during odor presentation, while conversely, `silent' cells, quiet at baseline, dominated odor responses. In this study we use a

Rodents rely heavily on somatosensation to explore their environment. The primary somatosensory cortex (S1) contributes to the encoding and perception of tactile stimuli. Although S1 neurons also receive non-tactile inputs, it is unclear whether S1 similarly encodes non-tactile sensory-based behaviour. Whole-cell patch clamp recordings were used to investigate the voltage response of layer 2/3 (L2/3) pyramidal neurons in S1 during performance in either a tactile-based or auditory-based association task in mice. A robust and sustained voltage response was evoked in L2/3 pyramidal neurons during