Short-term synchronization of intercostal motoneurone activity

1. The hypothesis is advanced that the joint occurrence of unitary excitatory post-synaptic potentials e.p.s.p.s) evoked in motoneurones by branches of common stem pre-synaptic fibres causes short-term synchronization of their discharge during the rising phases of the unitary e.p.s.p.s. 2. This hypothesis was tested using the pre- and post-stimulus time (PPST) histogram to detect synchronized firing among groups of intercostal motoneurones discharging in response to their natural synaptic drives. 3. Motor nerve action potentials were recorded monophasically from nerve filaments of the external intercostal muscles of anaesthetized, paralysed cats maintained on artificial ventilation. 4. Computer methods were used to measure peak spike amplitude, spike amplitude, spike interval and filament identification for simultaneous recordings from four filaments. The spike amplitude histograms were derived for each filament and groups of spikes were selected for analysis. 5. With spikes of one group designated as 'stimuli' (occurring at zero time) and those of a second as 'response' the PPST histogram was computed with different time bin widths. 6. With bin widths of 100 and 10 msec the central respiratory periodicity was apparent in the PPST histogram. With 1.0 msec bins the PPST histogram showed a narrow central peak extending to +/- 3.0 msec at its base. This 'short-term synchronization' supports the hypothesis of joint firing due to common presynaptic connectivity. 7. It was shown that detection of short-term synchronization was critically dependent on a sufficient quantity of data but that provided a simple criterion of adequate counts per bin in the PPST histogram was met, short-term synchronization could be detected between intercostal motoneurones of the same and adjacent segments.