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Comment by buboard | Hacker News Reader

Oddly we know a lot more about the electrophysiology of neurons of mice than of humans. Compartmentalization of synaptic integration is known to have computational consequences, e.g. see Bartlett Mel's work : http://www.pnas.org/content/111/1/498.short

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Well, as the article mentions, getting a viable sample "to play with" seems to be hard.

I don't find it odd, I don't plan to volunteer my living brain for patch clamp experiments :)

i dont think you can do that

Wouldn't one use two-photon microscopy? Patch clamp is quite limited in comparison.

There also is the combination of both methods - not surprisingly, they write how hard it is in a living brain (the clamping, the two-photon microscopy part is much easier): https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/robotic-patch-clamp...

Here is an article describing "three dimensional two-photon brain imaging in freely moving mice using a miniature fiber coupled microscope": https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-26326-3 (the experiments that I was aware of all still were done on a sedated animal with a fixated head).

when studying the propagation of dendritic signals, you would like to know the subthreshold voltage response at the soma. Since no spikes are elicited there is no calcium signal. Thats why you need patching.

I was unclear. My comment was just a tongue in cheek way of saying: it's not odd that we don't have much electrophysiological knowledge of single human neurons because of the practical and ethical problems that come with brain slice electrophysiology on humans -- you need live tissue which is hard to get.

What you've linked to deals with "in vivo" rather than brain slice ("in vitro") electrophysiology, which in humans would encounter the same issues. Cool techniques though nonetheless.

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