BACKGROUND Although the electrophysiological mechanisms underlying self-sustaining atrial fibrillation (AF) are unclear, recent studies suggest that one requirement for reentry, slow conduction, is frequently present in patients with AF. However, these observations limited to paroxysmal AF may not necessarily apply to chronic AF. Therefore, electrophysiological properties of the atrium and sinu...

The effects of phentolamine, 0-3 mg/min given intravenously for 15 minutes, on His bundle electrograms were studied in 11 patients with heart disease. Recordings were made at varied heart rates, using atrial pacing. Phentolamine significantly reduced the AH interval in every patient but it had no effect on the HV interval. Functional and effective refractory periods were measured with the use o...

This article addresses the functional significance of the electrophysiological properties of thalamic neurons. We propose that thalamocortical activity, is the product of the intrinsic electrical properties of the thalamocortical (TC) neurons and the connectivity their axons weave. We begin with an overview of the electrophysiological properties of single neurons in different functional states,...

background: radiofrequency catheter ablation (rfca) has been introduced as the treatment of choice for supraventricular tachycardia. the aim of this study was to evaluate the success rate as well as procedural and in-hospital complications of rfca for the treatment of atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia (avnrt).   methods: between march 1995 and february 2009, 544 patients (75.9 % fema...

A wide variety of rhythmic electrophysiological phenomena--including driven, induced, and endogenous activities of cortical neuronal masses--lend themselves naturally to analysis using frequency--domain techniques applied to multichannel recordings that discretely sample the overall spatial pattern of the rhythmic activity. For such cases, a large but so far poorly utilized body of statistical ...

Philosophers of neuroscience have traditionally described interfield integration using reduction models. Such models describe formal inferential relations between theories at different levels. I argue against reduction and for a mechanistic model of interfield integration. According to the mechanistic model, different fields integrate their research by adding constraints on a multilevel descrip...

Prevailing role of intracellular amyloid β (iAβ) in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) initiation and progression attracts more and more attention in recent years. To address whether iAβ induces early alterations of electrophysiological properties in cultured human primary neurons, we delivered iAβ with adenovirus and measured the electrophysiological properties of infected neurons with whole-cell record...

Biophysical properties of neurons become increasingly diverse over development, but mechanisms underlying and constraining this diversity are not fully understood. Here we investigate electrophysiological characteristics of Xenopus tadpole midbrain neurons across development and during homeostatic plasticity induced by patterned visual stimulation. We show that in development tectal neuron prop...

Neural stem and progenitor cells (NSPCs) are heterogeneous populations of self-renewing stem cells and more committed progenitors that differentiate into neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes. Accurately identifying and characterizing the different progenitor cells in this lineage has continued to be a challenge for the field. We found previously that populations of NSPCs with more neurogen...