The striatum plays an important role in linking cortical activity to basal ganglia output. We conducted the calcium (Ca2+) imaging to investigate the spontaneous activities of the striatum using acute slice preparations. Corticostriatal slices of rat brain were stained with Fura-PE3-AM. Long-lasting spontaneous intracellular Ca2+ ([Ca2+]i) transients, which lasted up to about 250 s, were observ...

We compared the transient increase of Ca2+ in single spines on basal dendrites of rat neocortical layer 5 pyramidal neurons evoked by subthreshold excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) and back-propagating action potentials (APs) by using calcium fluorescence imaging. AP-evoked Ca2+ transients were detected in both the spines and in the adjacent dendritic shaft, whereas Ca2+ transients evo...

Glutamate responses in cultured rat astrocytes from cerebella of neonatal rats were investigated using the perforated-patch configuration to record membrane currents without rundown of intracellular messenger cascades, and microfluorometric measurements to measure the intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) and intracellular pH (pHi) with fura-2 AM and 2',7'-bis-(2-carboxyethyl)-5,6-carboxyf...

Mature mouse oocytes are arrested at metaphase of the second meiotic division. Completion of meiosis and a block to polyspermy is caused by a series of repetitive Ca2+ transients triggered by the sperm at fertilization. These Ca2+ transients have been widely reported to last for a number of hours but when, or why, they cease is not known. Here we show that Ca2+ transients cease during entry int...

The continuity of capacitor voltages and inductor currents, well-known from the deterministic case, cannot be directly applied if the initial conditions are random. In this paper, new continuity relations for probability densities, mean values, correlation and covariance functions of the state variables are introduced. These continuity relations can be used for a global characterization of rand...

System reconfiguration at run time may cause unacceptable transients. In this paper, a new design methodology is proposed for reducing transients due to reconfiguration in recursive digital signal processing (DSP) systems. The technique utilizes the fact that, 1) transfer functions can be realized by different processing structures, and 2) these alternative realizations show different transient...

The continuity of capacitor voltages and inductor currents, well-known from the deterministic case, cannot be directly applied if the initial conditions are random. In this paper, new continuity relations for probability densities, mean values, correlation and covariance functions of the state variables are introduced. An example illustrates the use of the new relations for a global characteriz...

The blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal measured in the brain with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during an activation experiment often exhibits pronounced transients at the beginning and end of the stimulus. Such transients could be a reflection of transients in the underlying neural activity, or they could result from transients in cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebral meta...

We discuss recent experiments for the characterization of our femtosecond purerotational CARS facility for observation of Raman transients in N2 and atmospheric air. The construction of a simplified femtosecond four-wave mixing system with only a single laser source is presented. Pure-rotational Raman transients reveal well-ordered time-domain recurrence peaks associated with the near-uniform s...

Evoked transmitter release depends upon calcium influx into synaptic boutons, but mechanisms regulating bouton calcium levels and spontaneous transmitter release are obscure. To understand these processes better, we monitored calcium transients in axons and presynaptic terminals of pyramidal neurons in hippocampal slice cultures. Action potentials reliably evoke calcium transients in axons and ...