Whole-Cell Recordings in Freely Moving Rats
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Sakmann and Brecht recorded inside single neurons of freely moving rats, a miniature Kleindiek Nanomotor advancing and anchoring the patch pipette on the animal’s head.
Whole-cell patch-clamp recording demands extreme mechanical stability and had been limited to immobilised animals. The authors build a miniature head-mountable device that gains stability by rigidly anchoring the pipette after break-in, using the smallest Kleindiek Nanomotor (the NM2104, 21 mm long and 4 mm in diameter) to advance the pipette with micron resolution; Kleindiek also developed the lightweight pipette holder. The result is intracellular recording from identified neurons in freely moving rats, linking cellular physiology to behaviour.
