Zhou Wei, Li Xiangning, Liu Man, Zhao Yuan, Zhu Geng, Luo Qingming
Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
Biosystems. 2009 Jan;95(1):61-6. doi: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2008.06.008. Epub 2008 Jul 15.
Homeostatic plasticity plays a critical role in the stability of neuronal activities. Here, with high-density hippocampal networks cultured on multi-electrode arrays (MEAs), the transformation of spontaneous neuronal firing patterns induced by 1microM tetrodotoxin was clarified. Once tetrodotoxin was washed out after a 4-h treatment, spontaneous activities rose significantly with spike rate increasing approximately three times, and synchronized burst oscillations appeared throughout the network, with the cross-correlation coefficient between the active sites rising from 0.06+/-0.03 to 0.27+/-0.05. The long-term recording showed that the oscillations lasted for more than 4h before the network recovered. These results suggest that short-term treatment by tetrodotoxin may induce the homeostatically enhanced neuronal excitability, and that the spontaneous synchronized oscillations should be an indicator of homeostatic plasticity in cultured neuronal network. Furthermore, the non-invasive and long-term recording with MEAs as a novel sensing system is identified to be appropriate for pharmacological investigations of neuronal plasticity at the network level.
稳态可塑性在神经元活动的稳定性中起着关键作用。在此，利用培养在多电极阵列（MEA）上的高密度海马网络，阐明了由1微摩尔河豚毒素诱导的自发神经元放电模式的转变。在4小时处理后一旦洗去河豚毒素，自发活动显著增强，放电率增加约三倍，并且整个网络出现同步爆发振荡，活性位点之间的互相关系数从0.06±0.03升至0.27±0.05。长期记录显示振荡持续超过4小时，之后网络才恢复。这些结果表明，河豚毒素的短期处理可能诱导稳态增强的神经元兴奋性，并且自发同步振荡应该是培养的神经元网络中稳态可塑性的一个指标。此外，MEA作为一种新型传感系统的非侵入性和长期记录被确定适用于网络水平神经元可塑性的药理学研究。
