Abstract
Current optical methods based on fluorescent indicators permit to measure the intracellular calcium concentration with a high temporal resolution. To analyze the physiological mechanisms that underly the calcium dynamics, however, knowledge of the calcium fluxes into and out of the cell is needed.
Here we present a method that permits to separately estimate the influx and clearance rates, based on the measurement of Ca2+ concentration during a series of depolarization-evoked calcium transients. We apply this method to investigate calcium clearance mechanisms in isolated magnocellular neurons of the rat supraoptic nucleus.