Mitochondria regulate intracellular calcium (Ca2+) signals in smooth muscle cells, but mechanisms mediating these effects, and the functional relevance, are poorly understood. Similarly, antihypertensive ATP-sensitive potassium (KATP) channel openers (KCOs) activate plasma membrane KATP channels and depolarize mitochondria in several cell types, but the contribution of each of these mechanisms ...

Membrane currents and extracellular [K+] were measured in canine Purkinje strands during voltage-clamp steps to plateau or diastolic potentials. Extracellular [K+] increased during step depolarizations and decreased during step hyperpolarizations. On hyperpolarization, the largest fraction of the K+ depletion occurred during the initial 500 ms of the voltage-clamp step and was correlated with a...

The transient outward potassium current was studied in outside-out macropatches excised from the soma of CA1 pyramidal neurons and stratum (st.) oriens-alveus inhibitory interneurons in rat hippocampal slices. Arachidonic acid dose dependently decreased the charge transfer associated with the transient current, concomitant with an increase in the rate of current inactivation. Arachidonic acid (...

Increased firing of cholinergic neurons of the laterodorsal tegmental nucleus (LDT) plays a critical role in generating the behavioral states of arousal and rapid eye movement sleep. The majority of these neurons exhibit a prominent transient potassium current (IA) that shapes firing but the properties of which have not been examined in detail. Although IA has been reported to be blocked by int...

A two-variable integrate and fire model is presented to study the role of transient outward potassium currents in producing temporal aspects of dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) pyramidal cells with different profiles namely the chopper, the pauser and the buildup. This conductance based model is a reduced version of KM-LIF model (Meng & Rinzel, 2010) which captures qualitative firing features of a...