This is a response to the letter entitled ‘Dynamic clamp in cardiac electrophysiology’ regarding our recent article in The Journal of Physiology (Sun & Wang, 2005). In the letter, the author took issue with our statement regarding the history of the dynamic clamp technique and its application in cardiac studies. We would like to thank the author for pointing out the interesting history of the dynamic clamp, and we regret failing to cite in our article some of the pioneering works using this or similar techniques. We appreciate that the author brought to light a work by Scott in a 1979 PhD thesis, which may push the time of the developement of this technique by some 14 years from what is now commonly cited (Dorval et al. 2001; Prinz et al. 2004). In the article, we were simply pointing out that the technique has not been widely used in cardiac studies, a view that is not inconsistent with the handful of papers cited in the letter.
References
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