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1 Department of Neurobiology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: pkullman{at}pitt.edu.
The dynamic clamp method provides a powerful electrophysiological tool for creating virtual ionic conductances in living cells and studying their influence upon membrane potential. Here we describe G-clamp, a new way to implement a dynamic clamp using the real-time version of the LabVIEW programming environment together with a Windows host, an embedded microprocessor that runs a real-time operating system and a multifunction data acquisition board. The software includes descriptions of a fast voltage-dependent sodium conductance, delayed rectifier, M-type and A-type potassium conductances, and a leak conductance. The system can also read synaptic conductance waveforms from pre-assembled data files. These virtual conductances can be reliably implemented at speeds up to 43 kHz while simultaneously saving two channels of data with 16-bit precision. G-clamp also includes utilities for measuring current-voltage relations, synaptic strength and synaptic gain. Taking an approach built on a commercially available software/hardware platform has resulted in a system that is easy to assemble and upgrade. In addition, the graphical programming structure of LabVIEW should make it relatively easy for others to adapt G-clamp for new experimental applications.
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