Analysis of Potassium Conductance Relaxations in Squid Axon Membrane

摘要

Application of the Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) power-law formulation has become a standard procedure in the analysis of conduction in membrane preparations. In particular, the time-domain response of membrane current to a step voltage change is fitted by an equation (described subsequently) to obtain estimates of relaxation times of voltage-sensitive ion conductances. Heretofore, no attempt has been made to determine whether this procedure yields relaxation times that are independent of the empiricism and whether the relaxation times are consistent with those obtained by a direct (small signal) linear analysis. This paper presents evidence that the relaxation times determined from an HH analysis are model dependent and produce values that are different from those obtained by direct linear analysis.