Bioelectrical properties of cerebellar Purkinje cells in reeler mutant mice

Electroresponsive properties of intracellularly recorded Purkinje cells (PCs) in reeler mice were studied by using sagittal cerebellar slices maintained in vitro. In normally as well as in abnormally located PCs, fast spikes and slower rising multiphasic spikes were elicited by depolarizing currents, and they were abolished by tetrodotoxin and by cadmium respectively. This demonstrates that these neurons, as PCs in normal animals, do have sodium- and calcium-dependent spikes, thus indicating that these bioelectrical properties do not depend on the connectivity of PCs.