Figure 6. The oscillation period is prolonged in the absence of external Na⁺.

An olfactory receptor cell was exposed for 60 s to 3 μm cineole in normal Ringer solution (A) and in a low-Na⁺ solution, in which Na⁺ had been replaced with choline (B). Left-hand panels, suction pipette recordings over bandwidth DC to 500 Hz. Right-hand panels, autocorrelation functions calculated from the spike discharge in the left-hand panels; note the slowing of the oscillation period from 4.5 s under control conditions (A) to 8.7 s in the absence of external Na⁺ (B). Open triangles indicate the times at which the large junction current that resulted from the change to low-Na⁺ solution was corrected by manual subtraction.