Excitatory and inhibitory postsynaptic potentials (Eccles)
Potenciales postsinápticos excitadores e inhibidores (Eccles)
- Date
- 1951-1953 · confidence high
- Place
- John Curtin School of Medical Research, Canberra, Australia
- Credited to
- John Eccles, with Brock, Coombs and colleagues in Canberra
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Using intracellular microelectrodes in cat spinal motoneurons, Eccles's group measured the excitatory and inhibitory postsynaptic potentials and showed how transmission at those synapses combines electrical and chemical events. Eccles shared the 1963 Nobel Prize with Hodgkin and Huxley.
Eccles argued until c. 1951 that transmission at central synapses was electrical and changed his mind after his own intracellular recordings; the work was a team effort (Brock, Coombs and others).
What it led to
- modern neurophysiology of synaptic integration
- studies of inhibition in the central nervous system
- the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine