Abstract
In this paper we will discuss an area which is both of high scientific interest and also one in which Kacy Cole has contributed greatly to our understanding. We all know pretty well Kacy Cole’s role in clarifying the roles of the membrane impedance and capacitance in excitability culminating in the invention of the voltage clamp (Cole, 1949; Cole and Curtis, 1938), which changed electrophysiology and biophysics drastically and irreversibly. And, as we look in the present-day literature, one is tempted to consider the voltage clamp as the legacy of Cole, the major landmark that he has left on the scientific landscape. Certainly the clamp has proven to be an indispensable tool for exploring the mechanisms underlying excitability, as is testified to by the army of workers who, armed with clamp, daily do battle with the mysteries of axons, cell bodies, a great array of muscle cells and syncytia, and recently even such things as neuroblastomas (Moolenar and Spector, 1978); but there are some of us, a relatively small fraction of those who clamp, who spend at least part of our time following a somewhat different path in trying to understand excitability, and we find that this path too has first been trod by Kacy Cole. We refer to the study of how ionic currents and the passive properties of nerve combine to produce such properties as thresholds, accommodation, repetitive firing, indeed the whole array of excitable membrane properties that determine how information is organized and integrated in neural membranes.
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© 1981 Plenum Press, New York
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Jakobsson, E., Guttman, R. (1981). Continuous Stimulation and Threshold of Axons: The Other Legacy of Kenneth Cole. In: Adelman, W.J., Goldman, D.E. (eds) The Biophysical Approach to Excitable Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3297-8_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3297-8_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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