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Voltage Clamp Technique

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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

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Definition

Voltage clamp is an electrophysiological technique to record electrical currents in biological membranes. It is based on the principle that the current flowing through a cell membrane can be estimated by “clamping” the membrane potential to a constant value using the injection of a mirror current – a current of the same amplitude but reversed polarity.

In practice, the method is used primarily to characterize voltage-dependent conductances in the membrane of neurons by clamping the cells to different stepping potentials. The clamp is achieved with a circuit that quickly detects deviations from the stepping potential and generates currents to correct this deviation. Knowing this current gives the current in the membrane.

Detailed Description

History

The first implementations of voltage clamp go back to Cole (1949) and Hodgkin et al. (1952) and were instrumental in elucidating the mechanism of action potential generation.

In these early implementations, voltage clamp was...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, School of Engineering and Informatics, University of Sussex, Falmer, BN1 9QJ, Brighton, UK

    Thomas Nowotny

  2. The Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, University of Florida, 9505 Ocean Shore Blvd., St., Augustine, FL, 32080, USA

    Rafael Levi

Authors
  1. Thomas Nowotny
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  2. Rafael Levi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas Nowotny .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

    Ranu Jung

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Nowotny, T., Levi, R. (2015). Voltage Clamp Technique. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6675-8_137

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