Analysis of gated membrane currents and mechanisms of firing control in the rapidly adapting lobster stretch receptor neurone.

1. The gated membrane currents (a tetrodotoxin‐sensitive Na+ current and a tetraethylammonium‐ and 4‐aminopyridine‐sensitive K+ current) of the rapidly adapting stretch receptor neurone of lobster were investigated with respect to their kinetic properties using electrophysiological, pharmacological, and mathematical techniques. 2. The currents were found to be controlled by slow inactivations as well as by fast Hodgkin‐Huxley (1952) gating processes. They could be described by kinetic expressions which differed from those inferred for the slowly adapting receptor (Gestrelius & Grampp, 1983a; Gestrelius, Grampp & Sjölin, 1983) only with respect to some of the parameter values. 3. With these expressions, and additional equations for the cell's pump and leak current components (Edman, Gestrelius & Grampp, 1986), a mathematical receptor model was formulated which accurately predicts the impulse activity of the living preparation in different functional circumstances and which, therefore, was adopted as an appropriate theory of firing regulation. 4. From a model analysis it appeared (a) that the 'rapid' adaptation of the receptor's impulse activity is mainly an effect of slow Na+ current inactivation starting a regenerative process of accommodation which, basically, is due to a small ratio of subthreshold Na+ to K+ currents; (b) that, because of the transmembrane Na+ influx being limited by accommodation, impulse firing is only little affected by a Na+‐dependent pump current activation; and (c) that the phenomenon of increased firing frequency initially during prolonged stimulation ('negative adaptation') is an effect of the slow K+ current inactivation being faster than the slow Na+ current inactivation at comparable degrees of membrane polarization. 5. From further model studies it also appeared that, during depolarizations between successive action potentials evoked by constant stimulation, the membrane behaves like a high‐resistance constant‐current generator feeding into a short‐circuiting capacitor. In consequence, the cell's stimulus sensitivity (change in firing frequency with stimulation strength) is, at functionally relevant stimulation intensities, mainly determined by the membrane capacitance and by the amplitude of the interspike membrane depolarization while, at higher stimulation intensities and firing frequencies, it becomes more and more a function of the spike duration itself.