Articles

  • the Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences

Article

Original

Exp Neurobiol 2005; 14(1): 5-9

Published online November 30, -0001

© The Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences

Zinc Defers the Initiation of a Phasic Burst-type Firing of Rat Thalamic Relay Neurons

Min-Jung Shin and Jun-Mo Chung*

Department of Life Sciences and Center for Cell Signaling Research (CCSR), Ewha Womans University, Seoul 120-750, Korea

Correspondence to: *To whom correspondence should be addressed.
TEL: 82-2-3277-2395, FAX: 82-2-3277-2385
e-mail: jmchung@ewha.ac.kr

Abstract

A visualized whole-cell voltage clamping of thalamic slices was used to examine the possibility of a Zn2+-mediated alteration of Ca2+-dependent burst firing of a central element in thalamocortical oscillation. We found that Zn2+ reversibly delayed the initiation of low-threshold spike (LTS), a base of the burst firing, only when the membrane potentials of a thalamic neuron were more positive than -65 mV. A hyperpolarization- activated cationic current (Ih), one of the central ionic conductances in determining LTS generation, was decreased by Zn2+. However, the effective membrane potential range of the zinc action was below -75 mV so that the Zn2+ effect on Ih should not account for the LTS delay. We thus propose here that a transient low threshold Ca2+ current and/or a transient K+ current must be main determinants for the LTS delay by Zn2+.

Keywords: H-current, oscillation, slice recording, thalamocortical pathway