1. Bicuculline-induced epileptiform bursts in slices of neocortical tissue resected from children (3 mo to 14 yr) undergoing neurosurgical treatment for intractable epilepsy were studied with conventional intracellular recording techniques. The purposes of this study were to characterize the bursts evoked in immature human neocortical slices, to gain further insight to how N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) and non-NMDA receptors contribute to the genesis of the bursts, and to determine whether the characteristics of the bursts were related to patient age or clinically defined abnormality of the tissue. 2. Epileptiform bursts evoked by focal stimulation of the underlying white or gray matter in bicuculline (10 microM) were all-or-none events. Once evoked, the bursts in a given neuron appeared very similar to one another, regardless of stimulus intensity. Stronger stimuli only decreased the onset latency of the bursts. The bursts evoked with relatively weak stimuli (< 2-3 times the threshold), particularly those from stimulation of a distant site (4-5 mm), were variable in onset latency. The bursts from stimulation of a close site (0.5-2 mm) with stronger stimuli (> 3 times the threshold) were invariable in onset latency. 3. Across different cells, particularly across the cells in different slices, the bursts were quite variable in terms of their morphology and duration. When measured at one-half of the amplitude of the underlying depolarization (approximately 20-50 mV), the duration of the bursts ranged from 20 to 775 ms (n = 80 cells). In 23% of the cases (18 of 80 cells), afterdischarges lasting for tens of milliseconds to a few seconds followed the bursts.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)