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Summary: Encoding of Muscle Movement on Two Time Scales by a Sensory
Neuron That Switches Between Spiking and Bursting Modes
J. T. BIRMINGHAM, Z. B. SZUTS, L. F. ABBOTT, AND EVE MARDER
Volen Center and Biology Department, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts 02454-9110
Birmingham, J. T., Z. B. Szuts, L. F. Abbott, and Eve Marder.
Encoding of muscle movement on two time scales by a sensory
neuron that switches between spiking and bursting modes. J. Neuro-
physiol. 82: 27862797, 1999. The gastropyloric receptor (GPR)
neurons of the stomatogastric nervous system of the crab Cancer
borealis are muscle stretch receptors that can fire in either a spiking or
a bursting mode of operation. Our goal is to understand what features
of muscle stretch are encoded by these two modes of activity. To this
end, we characterized the responses of the GPR neurons in both states
to sustained and rapidly varying imposed stretches. The firing rates of
spiking GPR neurons in response to rapidly varying stretches were
directly related to stretch amplitude. For persistent stretches, spiking-
mode firing rates showed marked adaptation indicating a more com-
plex relationship. Interspike intervals of action potentials fired by
GPR neurons in the spiking mode were used to construct an accurate
estimate of the time-dependent amplitude of stretches in the frequency
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