Dynamic Clamp Analyses of Cardiac, Endocrine, and Neural Function

摘要

The dynamic clamp introduces artificial conductances into cells to simulate electrical coupling, votage-dependent, leak, and synaptic conductances. This review describes how the dynamic clamp has been used to address various questions in the cardiac,endocrine, and nervous systems. A common goal of many studies in physiological systems is to explain system behavior in terms of the behavior of their underlying components. In electrically excitable tissues such as those of the nervous, cardiac, and endocrine system, a classic problem is to understand how the properties of an individual cell depend on the interactions among its ion channels. In multi- cellular systems, it is also crucial to understand how the behavior of an organ or tissue depends on the properties of an individual cell and its interactions with its neighbors. The dynamic clamp is a set of related methods that allow investigators to address both the roles of individual membrane currents in cellular excitability and how the behavior ofgroups of cells depends on the properties of the cells and their interactions (50, 54, 59, 60). In this review, we use examples from cardiac, endocrine, and neuronal systems to illustrate the variety of configurations used in dynamic clamp experiments to illuminate important problems in physiology.