A DATA ACQUISITION PROGRAM FOR ON-LINE ANALYSIS OF LONG-TERM POTENTIATION AND LONG-TERM DEPRESSION. W.W. Anderson* and G.L. Collingridge. Dept. of Anatomy, Univ. of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TD, UK.

The 'LTP' program is a stimulation, data acquisition and on-line analysis program for studying Long-Term Potentiation (LTP) and Long-Term Depression (LTD). It is a 32-bit Extended DOS program written in Watcom C that runs on computers using DOS 6.x / Windows 3.x or Windows 95. Data acquisition boards that can be used include Axon Instruments' Digidata 1200, Scientific Solution's Labmaster, and several low cost boards.

The program records synaptic activity in extracellular, current clamp or voltage clamp modes. It produces repetitive sweeps with simultaneous data acquisition (up to 1.8 million samples/sweep) and stimulation (two extracellular pathway stimulation, S0 and/or S1, and epoch-like intracellular analog stimulation and digital outputs). The basic protocols are either slow single pathway S0 stimulation, or slow alternating dual pathway S0 or S1 stimulation. The sweep data can be signal averaged and digitally filtered on-line. On-line analysis includes: DC baseline, synaptic peak amplitude, synaptic slope (using linear regression), average amplitude, cell resistance, and patch electrode series resistance (using exponential curve fitting). LTP induction can be produced by single train, repetitive train (theta), or primed burst stimulation. LTD stimulation and analysis can be performed using fast repetitive sweeps (up to 2 Hz), or a single sweep lasting several minutes with faster repetitive stimulation. Data can be plotted on-line to a LaserJet II compatible printer. The 'LTP' program is freely available to academic users.

Supported by the Wellcome Trust and the MRC.