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Updated: Sep 21, 2026

Odorant-induced Responses Recorded from Olfactory Receptor Neurons using the Suction Pipette Technique
Published on: April 5, 2012
Tonic and phasic receptor neurons in the vertebrate olfactory epithelium
Rodolfo Madrid1, Magdalena Sanhueza, Osvaldo Alvarez
1Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Abstract:
Olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) respond to odorants with characteristic patterns of action potentials that are relevant for odor coding. Prolonged odorant exposures revealed three populations of dissociated toad ORNs, which were mimicked by depolarizing currents: tonic (TN, displaying sustained firing, 49% of 102 cells), phasic (PN, exhibiting brief action potential trains, 36%) and intermediate neurons (IN, generating trains longer than PN, 15%). We studied the biophysical properties underlying the differences between TNs and PNs, the most extreme cases among ORNs. TNs and PNs possessed similar membrane capacitances (approximately 4 pF), but they differed in resting potential (-82 versus -64 mV), input resistance (4.2 versus 2.9 G(Omega)) and unspecific current, I(u) (TNs: 0 < I(u)
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