Postnatal development of action potential-induced dendritic calcium entry in neocortical layer II/III pyramidal cells.

By whole-cell patch-clamp recording and calcium imaging with fura-2, we investigated postnatal development of intracellular calcium dynamics in apical dendrites of layer II/III pyramidal cells in the rat visual cortex. Dendritic calcium increases, induced by single action potentials, occurred only slightly on postnatal days 8-10 (P8-10), and then underwent a gradual enhancement during the second postnatal week to become 2-3-fold larger on P16-18 than on P8-10. The results suggest that the developmental growth of calcium dynamics may play a critical role for functional development of neocortical neurons. Copyright 1999 Elsevier Science B.V.