We are continuing the study of the effects of increased outside osmolarity. The results are impressive and we feel that they are due to improvement in the uniformity of the spatial control of the voltage clamp resulting from expansion of the space between the membrane of the axon and that of the Schwann cell. The results of analysis of a model for the effects of increasing the external osmolarity were presented at the International Biophysics Congress in Bristol, England in 1984. We are in the process of completing the experimental work and writing two papers on the effects of changing the osmolarity of the external solution. One paper on the time domain aspect, i.e., the absence of a rising phase in the gating current or a slow component of the capacity transient and another in the frequency domain. With a new frequency domain program we can go to higher frequencies and have found another eigenvalue for the gating current in the neighborhood of 10 kHz. In 1983 we are able to record sodium current fluctuations with good band-width using the cut-open axon and to extract functional channels and incorporate them into bilayers.
