Physiological and Pharmacological Studies on Cervical Motor Neurons in Slices Prepared from Neonatal and Aged Mice

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Author Info

N Hori Z Xu N Akaike Y Tan David O. Carpenter

Corresponding Author

David O. Carpenter
Institute for Health and the Environment; University at Albany, SUNY, Rensselaer, NY, USA

A B S T R A C T

The effects of age on the physiological properties of cervical motor neurons were examined in slices made from an excised spinal cord graft of ICR mice from the second day after birth to age 350 days. The membrane potential of post-natal day 2 (PD2) to PD350 was about -65 mV and did not change greatly with age, although it was slightly higher at PD2. However, there were significant changes in membrane resistance, which increased with age from about 15 to 30 MΩ. The depolarization induced by the excitatory amino acid agonists, kainic acid, NMDA and AMPA, decreased with aging in spite of the increase in membrane resistance. The motor neurons of the aged mice showed delayed recovery from excitation caused by excitatory amino acid agonists. By injecting Lucifer yellow CH into motor neurons, it was observed that the dendrite trees become thin, and some of the dendrite branches were missing in older animals.

Article Info

Article Type

Research Article

Publication history

Received: Mon 16, Aug 2021
Accepted: Tue 31, Aug 2021
Published: Thu 30, Sep 2021

Copyright

© 2023 David O. Carpenter. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.JBN.2021.01.02