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Chaos / Volume 21 / Issue 4 / FOCUS ISSUE: NONLINEAR AND STOCHASTIC PHYSICS IN BIOLOGY

Chaos 21, 047504 (2011); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3665698 (7 pages)

Nonlinear dynamics of skin potentials in the electrosensory paddlefish

Michael H. Hofmann1 and Lon A. Wilkens2

1Institute of Zoology, University of Bonn, Germany
2Department of Biology, University of Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri 63121, USA

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(Received 22 August 2011; accepted 11 November 2011; published online 29 December 2011)

It is known that steady skin potentials are present in fishes due to chloride pumps in the gills and in the skin. We have found previously that these skin potentials can fluctuate and oscillate in the electrosensory paddlefish. Here we show that larger, discharge like potentials can be triggered by applying external electric fields in the water surrounding the fish. These resemble action potentials in nerve cells, but have a longer time scale. Like action potentials, these discharges travel laterally in the skin. They start at the tip of the rostrum and propagate caudally to the tip of the gill covers. They follow the all-or-nothing rule and need some refractory period before they can be evoked again. This is the first time that such discharges, so strikingly similar to action potentials, have been described at the level of a whole organism.

© 2011 American Institute of Physics

Article Outline

  1. INTRODUCTION
  2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
  3. RESULTS
    1. Evoked skin potentials
    2. Occurrence of evoked skin potentials
    3. Distribution of skin potentials
    4. Spatio-temporal distribution of the fast component
    5. Controls
  4. DISCUSSION

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KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords

bioelectric potentials, cellular biophysics, neurophysiology, skin, zoology

PACS

  • 87.19.lb

    Action potential propagation and axons

ARTICLE DATA

Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3665698

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

1054-1500 (print)  
1089-7682 (online)

Publisher

$abstract.society.value is a Member of CrossRef American Institute of Physics

For access to fully linked references, you need to log in.
    Neiman, A. and Russell, D. “Stochastic biperiodic oscillations in the electroreceptors of paddlefish,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 3443–3446 (2001).


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