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INNOVATIVE METHODOLOGY

Measurement and Analysis of Postsynaptic Potentials Using a Novel Voltage-Deconvolution Method

¹Warwick Systems Biology Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom; and ²Department of Neuroscience, Nobel Institute for Neurophysiology, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

Submitted 21 August 2007; accepted in final form 24 November 2007

Accurate measurement of postsynaptic potential amplitudes is a central requirement for the quantification of synaptic strength, dynamics of short-term and long-term plasticity, and vesicle-release statistics. However, the intracellular voltage is a filtered version of the underlying synaptic signal and so a method of accounting for the distortion caused by overlapping postsynaptic potentials must be used. Here a voltage-deconvolution technique is demonstrated that defilters the entire voltage trace to reveal an underlying signal of well-separated synaptic events. These isolated events can be cropped out and reconvolved to yield a set of isolated postsynaptic potentials from which voltage amplitudes may be measured directly—greatly simplifying this common task. The method also has the significant advantage of providing a higher temporal resolution of the dynamics of the underlying synaptic signal. The versatility of the method is demonstrated by a variety of experimental examples, including excitatory and inhibitory connections to neurons with passive membranes and those with activated voltage-gated currents. The deconvolved current-clamp voltage has many features in common with voltage-clamp current measurements. These similarities are analyzed using cable theory and a multicompartment cell reconstruction, as well as direct comparison to voltage-clamp experiments.