I'm struggling, people.
Do you do electrophysiology? Do you know someone who does electrophysiology? Have you read about electrophysiology? Maybe you can help me...
For months, I've been toiling away in lab, trying to patch clamp layer V pyramidal neurons in the motor cortex of young adult rats (~6 weeks). This has proved to be much harder than anticipated. Actually, I knew it would be a challenge to record from adult cells, but I was confident I could pull it off. Progress has been decent; I started out as a true noob, and can now record from juvenile rats with pretty good results. But those damn adults!
My main problems are twofold: 1) Getting sufficiently healthy slices; and 2) Maintaining a patch once I've broken into a cell. I figure if I can rectify the former, the latter will come. But there are so few papers out there dealing with slice patch clamp in the cortex, especially when dealing with adult slices. Really, any help would be GREATLY appreciated. I'll list off all the parameters I've tried to tweak sometime in the near future. But, if you're reading this and feel you might have even the slightest insight, please email this poor grad student at jbiane@ucsd.edu
THANKS!!!