title: Physiological properties of supragranular cortical inhibitory interneurons expressing retrograde persistent firing.
abstract: Neurons are polarized functional units. The somatodendritic compartment receives and integrates synaptic inputs while the axon relays relevant synaptic information in form of action potentials (APs) across long distance. Despite this well accepted notion, recent research has shown that, under certain circumstances, the axon can also generate APs independent of synaptic inputs at axonal sites distal from the soma. These ectopic APs travel both toward synaptic terminals and antidromically toward the soma. This unusual form of neuronal communication seems to preferentially occur in cortical inhibitory interneurons following a period of intense neuronal activity and might have profound implications for neuronal information processing. Here we show that trains of ectopically generated APs can be induced in a large portion of neocortical layer 2/3 GABAergic interneurons following a somatic depolarization inducing hundreds of APs. Sparsely occurring ectopic spikes were also observed in a large portion of layer 1 interneurons even in absence of prior somatic depolarization. Remarkably, we found that interneurons which produce ectopic APs display specific membrane and morphological properties significantly different from the remaining GABAergic cells and may therefore represent a functionally unique interneuronal subpopulation.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physiology, University Medical Center of the Johannes-Gutenberg University Mainz, 55128 Mainz, Germany ; Neurowissenschaftliches Forschungszentrum, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Charité Mitte, Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Imbrosci
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physiology, University Medical Center of the Johannes-Gutenberg University Mainz, 55128 Mainz, Germany ; Department of Clinical Neurobiology, Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University and German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Angela
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Neitz
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physiology, University Medical Center of the Johannes-Gutenberg University Mainz, 55128 Mainz, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Mittmann
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials; D000818:Animals; D059330:GABAergic Neurons / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D007395:Interneurons / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D019579:Neocortex / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D013569:Synapses / Q000502:physiology