Voltage Clamp Technique. The voltage clamp is a current generator. The voltage clamp apparatus consists of a feedback amplifier a voltage amplifier and an ammeter.
The voltage clamp is a technique used to control the voltage across the membrane of a small or isopotential area of a nerve cell by an electronic feedback circuit. The voltage clamp experiment initial set up. The experimenter sets a holding voltage or command potential and the voltage clamp uses negative feedback to maintain the cell at this voltage.
Several books have been written describing this technique in detail.
The voltage clamp method allows researchers to study voltage gated ion channels by controlling the membrane potential of a neuron. Voltage clamp techniques 21 receives a signal from a voltage recording electrode e and compares this with a command potential. The voltage clamp technique was used by hodgkin and huxley to determine the behavior of the ionic conductances responsible for the generation of the action potential. Transmembrane voltage is recorded through a voltage electrode relative to ground and a current electrode passes current into the cell.
