Sensitivity and kinetics of mouse rod flash responses determined in vivo from paired‐flash electroretinograms

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Abstract
1 Electroretinograms (ERGs) were recorded corneally from C57BL/6J mice using a paired-flash procedure in which a brief test flash at time zero was followed at time tprobe by a bright probe flash of fixed strength, and in which the probe response amplitude was determined at time t=tprobe+ 6 ms. Probe responses obtained in a series of paired-flash trials were analysed to derive A(t), a family of amplitudes that putatively represents the massed response of the rod photoreceptors to the test flash. A central aim was to obtain a mathematical description of the normalized derived response A(t)/Amo as a function of Itest, the test flash strength. 2 With fixed tprobe (80 ≤tprobe≤ 1200 ms), A(t)/Amo was described by the saturating exponential function [1 - exp(-ktItest)], where kt is a time-dependent sensitivity parameter. For t= 86 ms, a time near the peak of A(t), k86 was 7·0 ± 1·2 (scotopic cd s m−2)−1 (mean ± s.d.; n= 4). 3 A(t)/Amo data were analysed in relation to the equation below, a time-generalized form of the above exponential function in which (k86Itest) is replaced by the product [k86Itestu(t)], and where u(t) is independent of the test flash strength. The function u(t) was modelled as the product of a scaling factor γ, an activation term 1 - exp[-α(t - td)2]}, and a decay term exp(-t/τω): where td is a brief delay, τω is an exponential time constant, and α characterizes the acceleration of the activation term. For Itest up to ∼2·57 scotopic cd s m−2, the overall time course of A(t) was well described by the above equation with γ= 2·21, td= 3·1 ms, τω= 132 ms and α= 2·32 × 10−4 ms−2. An approximate halving of α improved the fit of the above equation to ERG a-wave and A(t)/Amo data obtained at t about 0-20 ms. 4 Kinetic and sensitivity properties of A(t) suggest that it approximates the in vivo massed photocurrent response of the rods to a test flash, and imply that u(t) in the above equation is the approximate kinetic description of a unit, i.e. single photon, response.