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Again, welcome! Chris Roy 01:58, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)
GABA
editHi, I noticed your edit to the benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome article. You changed it to say that GABA receptors are the 2nd most common receptors in the brain. Are you sure? Which are the most common receptors?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 21:02, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure glutamate receptors are more common than GABA receptors in the CNS. I've been looking for a reference for that, but the best I've found so far say that glutamatergic neurons are the most common type, or that glutamate is the most common neurotransmitter in the nervous system ("Glutamate, the neurotransmitter most frequently used throughout the central nervous system, ...." Kandel et al., 2000: Principles of Neural Science, 4th edition, roughly page 285). I think Kandel says elsewhere that something like 75% or 80% of neurons use glutamate, 20% use GABA, 1-2% use glycine, and the rest use the rarer monoamines, ACh, or peptides... but I can't remember where that's written. Anyway, this leaves the possibility that the GABA receptor-to-neurotransmitter ratio is just much much larger than for glutamate, but I think that's very unlikely, since GABA receptors tend to be concentrated on the cell body (where they can have the greatest inhibitory effect, since GABA receptors are usually connected to Cl- channels, and Cl- only conducts a current if that patch of membrane is already depolarized (except in early development)), whereas the dendrites tend to be primarily excitatory. It's probably the case that even if you compare the GABA receptors to the AMPA glutamate receptors and ignore the NMDA and kainate varieties, the AMPA receptors are probably more common... but I can't find any cite that states that specifically. Of course, I also can't find any cites that says GABA is the most common, either, so I think what evidence there is is in favor of glutamate receptors being #1. If that explanation isn't satisfying enough for you, let me know and I'll dig through the literature a bit more for a better cite. Jtoomim (talk) 06:37, 24 January 2009 (UTC)