People often put bicucculine in the mix because if you're having
trouble getting LTP (ot at least maintaining it), you put a GABA(A)
blocker in the mix and you often get it.
On Jun 13, 2:24 am, usene... from out-of-phase.de (Christian Wilms) wrote:
> Hi,
>> you are understandably confused. Long-term plasticity is a vast field,
> which has so far evaded any attempt to sort things. You might want to
> have a look at the following papers for a humorous look at the field:
>> J. Sanes and J. Lichtmann. Can molecules explain long-term potentiation.
> Nature Neuroscience, 2:597-604, 1999.
>> S. J. Lisman J, Lichtman JW. Ltp: perils and progress. Nature Reviews
> Neuroscience, 4, 2003.
>> Now to your questions. LTP and LTD are expressed in both excitatory and
> inhibitory synapses. While initial studies focused only on excitatory
> synapses, inhibitory synapses are coming more and more into focus.
>> Researchers add bicuculline to the external solution as they want to be
> able to stimulate excitatory inputs to the cell they are recording from,
> without stimulating inhibitory inputs.
>> I think in general short-term plasticity refers to changes lasting
> seconds and minutes, while long-term refers to changes lasting hours
> (though 30 minutes is commonly considered to be long-enough-term for
> experimental purposes ;)
>> Hope that helps for starters,
>> Christian