These observations can be made with standard analysis techniques, although they require processing large amounts of **data** with demonstrable reliability. Each minute of recording uses ~3 megabytes of storage. These files must be checked for baseline stability and extraneous channel activity, then processed to determine Na + channel amplitude, duration, and frequency. This task was made easier using mean-variance analysis, which condensed minutes of **data** into a small set of twodimensional mean-variance histograms. Such histograms display the quality of the data, and permit subsequent analysis of both open times and Po for components with defined amplitude. Use of this technique greatly facilitated obtaining **data** of the highest quantity and quality.