Chapter 4 – Electrophysiology

Publisher Summary Electrophysiology is the branch of neuroscience that explores the electrical activity of living neurons and investigates the molecular and cellular processes that govern their signaling. Neurons communicate using electrical and chemical signals. Electrophysiology techniques listen in on these signals by measuring electrical activity, allowing scientists to decode intercellular and intracellular messages. The purpose of this chapter is to differentiate between the major categories of electrophysiological techniques and preparations, comparing the relative advantages, disadvantages, and common uses of each. To explain how these techniques are performed, the chapter describes the instruments that make up an electrophysiology setup (“the rig”). It also examines some common methods of data analysis and presentation used in the literature. Finally, it describes methods of manipulating neural activity during electrophysiology experiments. However, before describing electrophysiological techniques, it is necessary to have an understanding of what electrophysiology experiments attempt to measure. Therefore, the chapter starts with a brief review of the physical principles that provide neurons their electrical characteristics.