Functions
They can stimulate the opening of K+ channels which brings the neuron closer to the equilibrium potential of K+, hyperpolarising the neuron. This prevents sodium channels from opening, action potentials from firing, and VDCCs from opening, and so stops neurotransmitter release. Thus GABAB receptors are considered inhibitory receptors.
GABAB receptors can also reduce the activity of adenylyl cyclase and decrease the cell’s conductance to Ca2+.
GABAB receptors are involved in behavioral actions of ethanol, gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), and possibly in pain. Recent research suggests that these receptors may play an important developmental role.
Read more about this topic: GABAB Receptor
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Mark the babe
Not long accustomed to this breathing world;
One that hath barely learned to shape a smile,
Though yet irrational of soul, to grasp
With tiny finger—to let fall a tear;
And, as the heavy cloud of sleep dissolves,
To stretch his limbs, bemocking, as might seem,
The outward functions of intelligent man.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)