Admittance change of squid axon during action potentials. Change in capacitive component due to sodium currents.

Since the discovery of Cole and Curtis (1938. Nature (Lond.). 142:209 and 1939. J. Gen. Physiol. 22:649) that the imaginary components, i.e., capacitive and inductive components, of the admittance of squid axon membrane remained unchanged during the action potential, there have been numerous studies on impedance and admittance characteristics of nerves. First of all, it is now known that the dielectric capacitance of the membrane is frequency dependent. Second, the recent observation of gating currents indicates that dipolar molecules may be involved in the onset of ionic currents. Under these circumstances, the author felt it necessary to reinvestigate the membrane admittance characteristics of nerve axons. The measurements by Cole and Curtis were performed mainly at 20 kHz, indicating that their observation was limited only to the passive membrane capacitance. To detect the change in the capacitive component during the action potential, we performed transient admittance measurements at lower frequencies. However, the frequency range of the measurements was restricted because of the short duration of the normal action potential. In addition, a change in the inductive component obscured the low frequency behavior of the capacitance. To use wider frequency range and simplify the system by eliminating the inductive component, the potassium current was blocked by tetraethyl ammonium, and the increase in the capacitive component was reinvestigated during the long action potential. The admittance change under this condition was found to be mostly capacitive, and conductance change was very small. The increase in the capacitive component was from 1.0 to 1.23 muF/cm2.