Slow Recovery From Excitation of Thalamic Reticular Nucleus Neurons

1 Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; 2 Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; 3 CAS-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory for Visuo-Auditory Integration, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong Submitted 9 October 2008; accepted in final form 8 December 2008 Responses to repeated auditory stimuli were examined in 103 neurons in the auditory region of the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) and in 20 medial geniculate (MGB) neurons of anesthetized rats. A further six TRN neurons were recorded from awake rats. The TRN neurons showed strong responses to the first trial and weak responses to the subsequent trials of repeated auditory stimuli and electrical stimulation of the MGB and auditory cortex when the interstimulus interval (ISI) was short (