Cf. Stevens et T. Tsujimoto, ESTIMATES FOR THE POOL SIZE OF RELEASABLE QUANTA AT A SINGLE CENTRAL SYNAPSE AND FOR THE TIME REQUIRED TO REFILL THE POOL, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United Statesof America, 92(3), 1995, pp. 846-849
Local superfusion of limited dendritic areas with hypertonic or hyperk
alemic solutions stimulates the release of quanta from a small populat
ion of synapses made on rodent hippocampal neurons maintained in prima
ry culture, and each quantal event can be detected in the postsynaptic
neuron. With maintained stimulation, the initial release rate is abou
t 20 quanta per sec per synapse, and this rate declines exponentially
to a final low level. These observations can be interpreted as depleti
on of available quanta and, with this interpretation, a bouton would c
ontain one to two dozen quanta in its readily releasable pool. Tests w
ith a second application of the solution that produces release reveal
that the pool of readily releasable quanta is replenished with a time
constant of about 10 sec (36 degrees C). The pool of quanta defined in
this way may correspond to the population of vesicles docked at the b
outon's active zone.