Applicability of Peak-Scaled Nonstationary Fluctuation Analysis to the Study of Inhibitory Synaptic Transmission in Hippocampal Cultures

At present, there are no direct methods to determine the number of synaptic receptor-related channels activated in the course of synaptic transmission (N) or a value of the single-channel conductance (γ). Peak-scaled nonstationary fluctuation analysis (PS NSFA) should be considered the most well-developed indirect approach used for estimating these parameters. Despite the relatively wide using of this approach for the analysis of various synaptic currents, some aspects of possible errors that can occur in the course of data acquisition or their subsequent processing have not been studied. We examined in detail the problem of applicability of PS NSFA in the study of spontaneous and evoked GABA-ergic inhibitory postsynaptic currents (IPSCs). IPSCs were recorded using a dual patch-clamp technique from hippocampal neurons growing in low-density cultures. Parameters of the recorded IPSCs and values for different components of GABA-ergic synaptic transmission reported earlier were used for simulations and PS-NSFA analysis. In Monte Carlo computer simulations of evoked IPSCs, the influence of series resistance, background noise, asynchronicity of transmitter release, GABA_A channel properties, dendritic attenuation, and instrumental filtering on γ estimates obtained by PS NSFA was examined. We concluded that the γ and, consequently, N values may be satisfactorily estimated by the suggested approach using spontaneous and evoked IPSCs recorded in inhibitory synaptic connections in hippocampal cultures within a wide range of experimental conditions. We also estimated the mean of the single-channel conductance of synaptic GABA_A receptors in neurons from primary hippocampal cultures and found that this value (29 ± 5 pS) agrees well with the high conductance of single synaptic GABA_A receptors observed in acute hippocampal slices. This indicates that dissociated cultures are an adequate model for studying the properties of synaptic GABA_A receptors. Neirofiziologiya/Neurophysiology, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 379–388, July–August, 2004.