Drugs and Nerve Conduction

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Abstract
Technical methods which still are generally ignored have been available for some time for evaluating the action of drugs on nerve. The same equipment used to supply solely the height of a multi-fibered action potential could be used to measure at least threshold changes and demarcation potential alterations[long dash]data that would help enormously for a proper interpretation of effects. With little additional trouble, external electrodes, and better still internal electrodes, can provide data on configuration changes of the spike from large single fibers of readily obtainable invertebrates, and, thereby, can offer still more information for the understanding of mechanism. And, of course, with considerably more effort, the use of voltage-clamp methods offers the ultimate at present in the analysis of alterations in the electrophysiological or, more properly, in the electrochemical events of conduction. Until the maximum possibilities of such analysis, including electrolyte studies, are explored, attempts at interpretation, especially in molecular terms, or of extrapolation to the central nervous system, can be regarded at best as tentative. In the meantime, those agents which have been well characterized provide an important set of data that can serve as criteria for judging the validity of molecular models. As additional drugs are carefully studied, they will undoubtedly also serve as powerful tools for probing the mechanisms in excitable cells and as tests of the validity of molecular models.