Submitted on October 30, 2007
Accepted on February 4, 2008
Resting Microglial Motility is Independent of Synaptic Plasticity in Mammalian Brain
Long-Jun Wu1 and Min Zhuo2*
1 Physiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
2 Physiology, Univ of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: min.zhuo{at}utoronto.ca.
Microglia are well-known for their roles in brain injuries and infections. However, there is no function attributes to resting microglia so far. Here we performed a combination of simultaneous electrophysiology and time-lapse confocal imaging in GFP-labeled microglia in acute hippocampal slices. In contrast to CA1 neurons, microglia showed no spontaneous or evoked synaptic currents. Neither glutamate nor GABA-induced current/chemotaxis of microglia was detected. Strong tetanic stimulation of Schaffer-collateral pathways that induces CA1 LTP did not affect microglial motilities. Our results suggest that microglia is highly reserved for neuronal protective function but not synaptic plasticity in the brain.
