An electrophysiology quesiton

[Xiaoshen Li]

Matt,

Thank you so much for your great explanation. It really helped me a lot. 
I have another question related with voltage clamp. This question is 
following:

"An interesting side issue worth mentioning here is that a voltage clamp 
applied to one end of a cable is mathematically equivalent to a short 
circuit at that end. The use of a voltage clamp will thus fundamentally 
alter the electronic structure of a neuron..." (Foundations of Cellular 
Neurophysiology by Johnston and Wu, 1995, page 78)

Could you explain why a voltage clamp on a neuron is adding a short 
circuit to the neuron? Since voltage clamp changes the electronic 
structure of a neuron, all the data obtained is actually from a changed 
neuron. Maybe there is a need to reinterpret the published voltage clamp 
data if the original authors were not aware of this issue.

Thank you so much for your help.


Sincerely,
Xiaoshen