Abstract:
Microelectrode arrays (MEAs) are used to study the electrical activity in brain slices and neuronal cultures. MEA experiments for the analysis of electrical stimulation r...Show MoreMetadata
Abstract:
Microelectrode arrays (MEAs) are used to study the electrical activity in brain slices and neuronal cultures. MEA experiments for the analysis of electrical stimulation responses require the tissue or culture to be prone to stimulation. For brain slices, potential stimulation sites may be directly visible in microscope, in which case the determination of stimulability at those locations is sufficient. In unstructured neuronal cultures, potential stimulation sites may not be known a priori, and spatial stimulability screening should be performed. Considering, e.g., 59 microelectrode sites, each to be stimulated several times, may result in long screening times, unacceptable with a MEA system without an integrated CO2 incubator, or in high stimulation effects on the networks. Here, we describe an implementation of a fast stimulation protocol employing pseudorandom stimulation site switching aiming at alleviating the network effects of the stimulability screening. In this paper, we show the usability of the proposed protocol by first detecting stimulable locations and subsequently apply repeated stimulation on the identified potentially stimulable locations to observe an exemplary neuronal pathway.
Published in: 2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC)
Date of Conference: 25-29 August 2015
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 05 November 2015
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PubMed ID: 26737032