Patch clampThe patch clamp technique is a laboratory technique in electrophysiology used to study ionic currents in individual isolated living cells, tissue sections, or patches of cell membrane. The technique is especially useful in the study of excitable cells such as neurons, cardiomyocytes, muscle fibers, and pancreatic beta cells, and can also be applied to the study of bacterial ion channels in specially prepared giant spheroplasts. Patch clamping can be performed using the voltage clamp technique.
ElectrophysiologyElectrophysiology (from Greek ἥλεκτ, ēlektron, "amber" [see the etymology of "electron"]; φύσις, physis, "nature, origin"; and -λογία, -logia) is the branch of physiology that studies the electrical properties of biological cells and tissues. It involves measurements of voltage changes or electric current or manipulations on a wide variety of scales from single ion channel proteins to whole organs like the heart. In neuroscience, it includes measurements of the electrical activity of neurons, and, in particular, action potential activity.
Patch-sequencingPatch-sequencing (patch-seq) is a method designed for tackling specific problems involved in characterizing neurons. As neural tissues are one of the most transcriptomically diverse populations of cells, classifying neurons into cell types in order to understand the circuits they form is a major challenge for neuroscientists. Combining classical classification methods with single cell RNA-sequencing post-hoc has proved to be difficult and slow.
T cellT cells are one of the important types of white blood cells of the immune system and play a central role in the adaptive immune response. T cells can be distinguished from other lymphocytes by the presence of a T-cell receptor (TCR) on their cell surface. T cells are born from hematopoietic stem cells, found in the bone marrow. Developing T cells then migrate to the thymus gland to develop (or mature). T cells derive their name from the thymus. After migration to the thymus, the precursor cells mature into several distinct types of T cells.
Voltage clampThe voltage clamp is an experimental method used by electrophysiologists to measure the ion currents through the membranes of excitable cells, such as neurons, while holding the membrane voltage at a set level. A basic voltage clamp will iteratively measure the membrane potential, and then change the membrane potential (voltage) to a desired value by adding the necessary current. This "clamps" the cell membrane at a desired constant voltage, allowing the voltage clamp to record what currents are delivered.
Spiking neural networkArtificial neural network Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are artificial neural networks that more closely mimic natural neural networks. In addition to neuronal and synaptic state, SNNs incorporate the concept of time into their operating model. The idea is that neurons in the SNN do not transmit information at each propagation cycle (as it happens with typical multi-layer perceptron networks), but rather transmit information only when a membrane potential—an intrinsic quality of the neuron related to its membrane electrical charge—reaches a specific value, called the threshold.
T helper cellThe T helper cells (Th cells), also known as CD4+ cells or CD4-positive cells, are a type of T cell that play an important role in the adaptive immune system. They aid the activity of other immune cells by releasing cytokines. They are considered essential in B cell antibody class switching, breaking cross-tolerance in dendritic cells, in the activation and growth of cytotoxic T cells, and in maximizing bactericidal activity of phagocytes such as macrophages and neutrophils.
Neural codingNeural coding (or neural representation) is a neuroscience field concerned with characterising the hypothetical relationship between the stimulus and the individual or ensemble neuronal responses and the relationship among the electrical activity of the neurons in the ensemble. Based on the theory that sensory and other information is represented in the brain by networks of neurons, it is thought that neurons can encode both digital and analog information.
Gap junctionFirst photographed around 1952 it wasn't until 1969 that gap junctions were referred to as "gap junctions". Named after the 2-4 nm gap they bridged between cell membranes, they had been characterised in more detail by 1967. Gap junctions are one of four broad categories of intercellular connections that form between a multitude of animal cell types. Within a gap junction reside protein complexes, referred initially to as "globules", observed to connect one cell to another and also vesicles within a cell to the outer cell membrane.
B cellB cells, also known as B lymphocytes, are a type of white blood cell of the lymphocyte subtype. They function in the humoral immunity component of the adaptive immune system. B cells produce antibody molecules which may be either secreted or inserted into the plasma membrane where they serve as a part of B-cell receptors. When a naïve or memory B cell is activated by an antigen, it proliferates and differentiates into an antibody-secreting effector cell, known as a plasmablast or plasma cell.
