Subject: Hair Cell Models From: Harry Erwin <harry.erwin(at)SUNDERLAND.AC.UK> Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 13:41:39 +0100The paper by Glowatzki and Fuchs ('Transmitter release at the hair cell ribbon synapse' in Nature neuroscience, v 5 nr 2, Feb 2002) appears to do a good job of forcing a rethink of the available hair cell models. They show that the ribbon synapse seems to operate by multivesicle release, with the number of vesicles being released in a single event insensitive to degree of depolarization. They do note that the amplitude histogram should be described by binomial statistics; however, they were unable to fit binomial distributions to this data. This raises the following question: Consider the curve relating the rate of vesicle release events at a hair cell ribbon synapse to depolarization. Is there any evidence that the spontaneous rate of vesicle release events lies on the same curve? -- --- Harry Erwin, PhD, Senior Lecturer of Computing, University of Sunderland. Computational neuroscientist modeling bat bioacoustics and behavior. <http://www.cet.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0her/index.html>