Fig. 5.

Modulation of spiking patterns mediated by electrical synapses. A, A sine wave current stimulus (1 Hz) was applied to cell 1, with the amplitude adjusted to generate one spike per cycle. Cell 2, which was electrically coupled to cell 1, was depolarized with steady current to near threshold. Sine wave stimuli to cell 1 induced entrained spikes in cell 2. The tracesbelow show expansion of the traces above. Spikes in these panels are truncated. B, In a different pair of electrically coupled cells (coupling coefficient of 0.04), a 1 Hz sine wave stimulus to cell 1 induced firing of a single burst of spikes on each cycle (left). When both cells were stimulated with similar currents in-phase, cell 1 generated a burst plus two tonic spikes on each cycle (middle). When the same stimuli were shifted to anti-phase (right), cell 1 fired only two tonic spikes per cycle, and cell 2 fired a single spike per cycle. The top row shows expanded regions of recordings from cell 1, as indicated. Spike amplitudes have been truncated in all traces.