Inhibitory Regulation of Excitatory Neurotransmission
Within the central and peripheral nervous systems of animals, including man, inhibition is crucial to counterbalance excitatory neurotransmission, which is predominantly mediated by glutamate and its receptors. Although, particularly in brain, much of thi
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Dietmar Richter Institute for Cellbiochemistry and Clinical Neurobiology University of Hamburg Süderfeldstrasse 24 22529 Hamburg Germany [email protected]
Henri Tiedge The Robert F. Furchgott Center for Neural and Behavioral Science Department of Physiology and Pharmacology Department of Neurology SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn Brooklyn, New York 11203 USA [email protected]
Series Editors D. Richter, H. Tiedge
Mark G. Darlison (Ed.)
Inhibitory Regulation of Excitatory Neurotransmission With 28 Figures, 1 in Colour, and 4 Tables
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Mark G. Darlison School of Biomedical and Natural Sciences College of Science and Technology Nottingham Trent University Clifton Campus, Clifton Lane Nottingham NG11 8NS UK [email protected]
ISSN 0080-1844 ISBN-13 978-3-540-72601-2 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2007934336
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For Annerose and Max, and others who have made my life worthwhile.
“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence” Abigail Adams (1744 to 1818)
Preface
That inhibitory mechanisms evolved in nervous systems after the appearance of excitatory ones seems obvious, although this is difficult to prove. And, as evidenced from studies on invertebrates, early cell-to-cell communication may have been mediated by peptides, which are abundant both in number and variety in the nerve nets of cnidarians (for example, sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish) and in the relatively simple nervous systems of mollusks. However, in mammals, the majority of excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmission is produced by just two amino acids, l-glutamate and γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), respectively. l-glutamate binds to, and activates, a plethora of receptors that either possess an integral ion channel (ionotropic receptors) or couple to different guanine nucleotide binding proteins (G-protein coupled receptors; al
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