SUMMARY1. By spike-triggered averaging of intracellular synaptic noise it has been shown in pentobarbitone anaesthetized cats that jaw elevator muscle spindle afferents with their cell bodies in the mid-brain have a relatively weak monosynaptic projection to masseter and temporalis motoneurones.2. Extending the spike-triggered averaging method to recording extracellular excitatory field potentials it has been shown that virtually all the spindles do project monosynaptically to the motoneurone pool. It is concluded that the general weakness of the projection is due to its restriction to a small proportion of the motoneurones, possibly those concerned most with tonic postural functions.3. The shape of individual intracellular e.p.s.p.s together with the spatial distribution of extracellular excitatory potential fields provide some evidence for a dentrically weighted distribution of the synapses.4. Evidence is presented that both primary-and secondary-type spindle afferents project monosynaptically, the secondary effects being some 71 % of the strength of the primary ones.
1. Unit recordings have been made from the central ends of filaments of the masseter nerve in lightly anaesthetized cats. Evidence is presented to show that fusimotor activity may be distinguished from alpha motor activity. 2. During reflex cyclic movements induced by intra‐oral stimulation, two distinct patterns of fusimotor firing emerged. One type of unit increased firing at the beginning and sustained this with little modulation throughout the movements. The other type was strongly modulated approximately in parallel with the alpha motor activity. 3. By comparison with records of jaw elevator spindle afferents under similar conditions, it was deduced that the sustained type of action was due to dynamic fusimotor neurones while the modulated type was due to static fusimotor neurones. 4. The patterns of fusimotor activity seen in these rhythmic movements under light anaesthesia agree well with the patterns deduced from spindle recordings in the conscious cat during mastication. 5. The results emphasize the importance of looking beyond a simple hypothesis of ‘alpha‐gamma co‐activation’ to explain fusimotor function. It is proposed that tonic dynamic fusimotor activity is set at the beginning of a movement to determine the incremental sensitivity of primary endings to stretch. The static fusimotor fibres are activated principally during shortening to help keep both primary and secondary endings active.
Neurons in the medial septal/diagonal band complex (MS/DB) in vivo exhibit rhythmic burst-firing activity that is phase-locked with the hippocampal theta rhythm. The aim was to assess the morphology of local axon collaterals of electrophysiologically identified MS/DB neurons using intracellular recording and biocytin injection in vitro. Cells were classified according to previous criteria into slow-firing, fast-spiking, regular-spiking, and burst-firing neurons; previous work has suggested that the slow-firing neurons are cholinergic and that the other types are GABAergic. A novel finding was the existence of two types of burst-firing neuron. Type I burst-firing neurons had significantly longer duration after hyperpolarisation potentials when held at -60 mV, and at -75 mV, type I neurons exhibited a low-threshold spike with more rapid activation and inactivation kinetics than those of type II neurons. We have, also for the first time, described the main features of the local axon collaterals of the five neuron types. All filled neurons possessed a main axon that gave forth 1-12 local primary axon collaterals. All electrophysiological types, except for the type I burst-firing neuron, had a main axon that coursed toward the fornix. Myelination of the main axon was a prominent feature of all but the slow-firing neurons. Branching of the primary axon collaterals of the fast-spiking and type I burst-firing neurons was more extensive than that of the other cell types, with those of the slow-firing neurons exhibiting the least branching. All cell types possessed axon collaterals of the en passant type, and some in addition had twiglike or basketlike axon terminals. All cell types made synapses on distal dendrites; a proportion of the fast-spiking and burst-firing cells in addition had basketlike terminals that made synaptic contacts on proximal dendrites and on somata. Two morphological types of somata were postsynaptic to the basket cells: large (20-30-microm) oval cells with dark cytoplasm, and large oval cells with paler cytoplasm, often with an apical dendrite. The presence of lamellar bodies in the large dark neurons suggests that they may be cholinergic neurons, because previous work has localised these structures in some neurons that stain for choline acetyltransferase. Our work suggests therefore that there may be GABAergic neurons in the MS/DB that form basket synaptic contacts on at least two types of target cell, possibly cholinergic and GABAergic neurons, which means that the basket cells could play a key role in the generation of rhythmic activity in the MS/DB.
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