Our recent study demonstrated that carbachol can act at M1-like muscarinic receptors to reduce the membrane K+ conductance and excite the neostriatal neurons. In the present study, we further studied the molecular mechanism by which carbachol induced inward currents in neostriatal neurons. In acutely isolated neostriatal neurons held at-60 mV, pressure application of carbachol (30 microM) induced a transient inward current underlying whole-cell voltage-clamp mode. In cells loaded with the stable GDP analogue guanosine 5'-0-(2-thiodiphosphate) (GDP-beta-S, 1 mM), the carbachol-induced inward current was significantly diminished. However, the carbachol response was not affected by intracellular dialysis of the neostriatal neurons with either protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitors, PKCI 19-36 (5 microM) or NPC-15437 (20 microM), or a potent cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) inhibitor, Rp-cAMPS (25 microM). These results show that a G-protein-coupled mechanism mediates carbachol-induced inward current in the neostriatal neurons and that neither PKC- nor PKA-dependent intracellular transduction pathways are involved in the carbachol response.