APA Dictionary of Psychology

the use of very fine-bore pipette microelectrodes, clamped by suction onto tiny patches of the plasma membrane of a neuron, to record the electrical activity of a single square micrometer of the membrane, including single ion channels. [devised in the 1980s by German neuroscientists Erwin Neher (1944–  ) and Bert Sakmann (1942–  )]