PMID- 18671740
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20081020
LR  - 20211028
IS  - 1460-9568 (Electronic)
IS  - 0953-816X (Linking)
VI  - 28
IP  - 4
DP  - 2008 Aug
TI  - Spontaneous discharge characteristic of neurons in the ventromedial nucleus of 
      the rat hypothalamus in vivo.
PG  - 693-706
LID - 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2008.06389.x [doi]
AB  - The ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus (VMN) is one of the main central 
      regulators of two vital behaviours in rat: feeding behaviour and sexual 
      behaviour. To better understand how these behaviours are regulated in the brain 
      requires assessing how physiological stimuli are encoded by the electrical 
      activity of populations of neurons, but there is still little known about the 
      electrical activity of neurons in the VMN, in particular how it is regulated in 
      vivo. Here, we recorded spontaneous firing activity from single VMN neurons in 
      urethane-anaesthetized rats in vivo, and characterized their electrophysiological 
      identities. For each of 271 cells, we constructed hazard functions from 
      interspike interval histograms to show how the excitability of the cell changes 
      with time after a spike. We completed the statistical characterization of each 
      cell by analysis of its mean firing rate and coefficient of variation, and 
      features of its interspike interval distribution, including kurtosis and skew 
      (around the mean and around the mode). We thereby identified nine subpopulations 
      of neurons in the VMN, which we named according to the main features of their 
      firing pattern. One of the subpopulations fires very regularly, another almost 
      randomly and another in intermittent clusters of two-three spikes, but perhaps 
      the most interesting subpopulation are 'oscillatory cells' whose activity seems 
      to be governed by an extrinsic 3-Hz rhythm. Whether these electrophysiologically 
      distinct populations are also functionally and neurochemically distinct has now 
      to be tested.
FAU - Sabatier, Nancy
AU  - Sabatier N
AD  - Centre for Integrative Physiology, The University of Edinburgh, Hugh Robson 
      Building, George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9XD, UK.
FAU - Leng, Gareth
AU  - Leng G
LA  - eng
GR  - BB/E015123/1/BB_/Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/United 
      Kingdom
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
DEP - 20080730
PL  - France
TA  - Eur J Neurosci
JT  - The European journal of neuroscience
JID - 8918110
SB  - IM
MH  - Action Potentials/*physiology
MH  - Animals
MH  - Female
MH  - Male
MH  - Neurons/cytology/*physiology
MH  - Rats
MH  - Rats, Sprague-Dawley
MH  - Ventromedial Hypothalamic Nucleus/*cytology/metabolism
EDAT- 2008/08/02 09:00
MHDA- 2008/10/22 09:00
CRDT- 2008/08/02 09:00
PHST- 2008/08/02 09:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2008/10/22 09:00 [medline]
PHST- 2008/08/02 09:00 [entrez]
AID - EJN6389 [pii]
AID - 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2008.06389.x [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Eur J Neurosci. 2008 Aug;28(4):693-706. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2008.06389.x. 
      Epub 2008 Jul 30.