Techniques for intra-axonal recording of electrical activity from single nerve fiber in vitro and in situ

Abstract

The method usually applied for recording the electrical activity of single nerve fiber is extracellular recording on isolated single nerve fiber. It is difficult to obtain stable and satisfactory results from direct intracellular recording of single nerve fiber, except for some special biological materials, such as Loligo giant axon. We present in this paper a technique for recording intracellular resting membrane potential and action potential from single nerve fiber both in vitro and in situ, using glass microelectrode and a special mirror-base plate for fixing the preparation. Besides, we also report a method for labelling single nerve fiber by means of injection of HRP into the axon.