Fig. 1.
Model circuits for different cell geometries. (A) Spherical isopotential cells. These cells can be described by three passive circuit parameters: membrane capacitance (Cm), membrane conductance (Gm), and series resistance (Rs, a composite parameter usually dominated by the resistance of the attached whole-cell mode recording patch pipette but also including the resistance of the cytoplasmic and extracellular paths). (B) Two-compartment model proposed by Mennerick et al. (18) to describe goldfish retinal bipolar neurons. This four-component model assumes negligibly low membrane conductance and axon capacitance. R2 is the axon resistance, C1 and C2 are the synaptic terminal and cell soma capacitance, and R1 is series resistance of a patch pipette recording from the synaptic terminal. (C) General n-compartment model described by 3n parameters.