Abstract: | Correlations between densities of various types of inward currents in the somatic membrane of dorsal root ganglion neurons were studied in three different rat age groups: 5–9 days, 45 days, and 90 days. A linear relationship was found in neurons with "slow" tetrodotoxin-sensitive sodium current between the densities of high-threshold calcium current and "slow" sodium current (Bravias-Pearson's correlation coefficient: r=0.84 and 0.70 for n1=16 and n2=28, respectively). No such correlation was observed in neurons with low-threshold calcium inward current. Cells with only two types of channel — "fast" sodium and high-threshold calcium — present in their somatic membrane manifested an inverse correlation (r=–0.48, where n4=95) between the densities of transmembrane currents passing through these channels. No inverse relationship was observed in the density of "fast" sodium and high-threshold calcium currents in neurons with tetradotoxinresistant "slow" sodium and/or low threshold calcium channels.A. A. Bogomolets Institute of Physiology, Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Kiev. Translated from Neirofiziologiya, Vol. 18, No. 6, pp. 820–827, November–December, 1986. |