Patch Clamp Recording Methodology

One of the most exciting recent advances in the field of neurobiology has been the development of the technique called single-channel or patch clamp recording. The utility and power of the method are now being exploited by neuroscientists using a wide variety of tissue preparations to answer questions that previously had been, at best, difficult to fathom. The purpose of this chapter is to provide basic information on the development and usefulness of the technique and practical information on how to set up and perform basic experiments. The reader will be referred to books and articles for a more thorough discussion of methods when those methods go beyond the scope of this chapter. An excellent book, entitled Single Channel Recording , edited by B. Sakmann and E. Neher (1983), covers thoroughly most aspects of this technique. In addition, several reviews about patch clamping have been written (Neher et al., 1978; Hamill et al., 1981; Sachs and Auerbach, 1983; Auerbach and Sachs, 1984; Rae and Levis, 1984; Rae, 1985; Dwyer, 1985). Finally this chapter is not designed to be a complete review of the literature, since there are over 250 articles and reviews currently available on this subject.