Abstract
Spontaneous neuronal burst activities were optically recorded in the neonatal rat brainstem slice preparation (1-3days after birth) stained with a voltage sensitive dye (RH-795). Dledullarv spontaneous bursts were continuously monitored from the central cut-end of the XIIth cranial nerve in the standard artificial cerebro-spinal fluid. During a respiratory cycle including one bursting phase and one silent phase (approximately 10s), a, fluorescence change corresponding to spontaneous XIIth cranial nerve activity was microscopically observed both in the hypoglossal nucleus and the ventrolateral medulla (VLM) in which the localization of many respiratory neurons had been demonstrated in physiological studies. The present results show the feasibility of using optical recording for the analysis of spontaneous neuron activity.
