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The Journal of Neuroscience, February 15, 2001, 21(4):1148-1159

Muscarinic Regulation of Dendritic and Axonal Outputs of Rat Thalamic Interneurons: A New Cellular Mechanism for Uncoupling Distal Dendrites

J. Julius Zhu^{1, 2} and Paul Heggelund^{1, 3}

¹ Department of Cell Physiology, Max-Planck-Institute for Medizinische Forschung, Heidelberg D-69120, Germany, ² Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 11724, and ³ Department of Physiology, University of Oslo, N-0317 Oslo, Norway

Inhibition is crucial for sharpening the sensory information relayed through the thalamus. To understand how the interneuron-mediated inhibition in the thalamus is regulated, we studied the muscarinic effects on interneurons in the lateral posterior nucleus and lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus. Here, we report that activation of muscarinic receptors switched the firing pattern in thalamic interneurons from bursting to tonic. Although neuromodulators switch the firing mode in several other types of neurons by altering their membrane potential, we found that activation of muscarinic subtype 2 receptors switched the fire mode in thalamic interneurons by selectively decreasing their input resistance. This is attributable to the muscarinic enhancement of a hyperpolarizing potassium conductance and two depolarizing cation conductances. The decrease in input resistance appeared to electrotonically uncouple the distal dendrites of thalamic interneurons, which effectively changed the inhibition pattern in thalamocortical cells. These results suggest a novel cellular mechanism for the cholinergic transformation of long-range, slow dendrite- and axon-originated inhibition into short-range, fast dendrite-originated inhibition in the thalamus observed in vivo. It is concluded that the electrotonic properties of the dendritic compartments of thalamic interneurons can be dynamically regulated by muscarinic activity.

Key words: rat; thalamus; interneurons; inhibition; cholinergic receptors; cortex

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Copyright © 2001 Society for Neuroscience  0270-6474/01/2141148-12$05.00/0

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