Properties of spontaneous and miniature excitatory postsynaptic currents in neurons of the rat prefrontal cortex

Quantum analysis of postsynaptic currents is important for fundamental and applied studies of synaptic transmission and plasticity. In the present work, we investigated the possibility of using the characteristics of spontaneous excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) for estimation of quantum parameters of excitatory synaptic transmission in different types of neurons from rat prefrontal cortex slices. By blocking spontaneous spiking activity in slices by tetrodotoxin, we showed that spontaneous and miniature EPSCs in the prefrontal cortex neurons did not differ in their properties. Therefore, both spontaneous and miniature responses can be used for estimation of quantum parameters of excitatory synaptic transmission in this preparation. We also revealed that excitatory spontaneous responses of pyramidal cells were two times lower by amplitude, had a twice lower coefficient of variation and exhibited much slower kinetics than responses of the fast-spiking and regular-spiking interneurons. Possible mechanisms of these differences are discussed.