Rev Neurosci. 2013;24(5):527-36. doi: 10.1515/revneuro-2013-0028.
With increasing use of various techniques to record optically and electrophysiologically from awake behaving animals and the growing developments of brain-machine interfaces, one might wonder if the use of acute-slice physiology is on its deathbed. Have we actually arrived at a stage where we can abandon the use of acute slices, with most of the information about brain functions coming from in vivo experiments? We do not believe that this is the case, given that our understanding of the nuts and bolts of the nervous system, such as ion channels and transporters in near-native state, neuronal compartmentalization, and single-neuron computation, is far from complete. We believe that in the foreseeable future, questions in these fields will still be best addressed by acute-slice physiology. We approach this review from the perspective of improving acute-slice physiology so it can continue to provide relevant and valuable contributions to neuroscience. We conclude that the death of acute-slice physiology is an obituary prematurely written, merely due to waxing and waning trends in science and the shortsightedness of investigators. Acute-slice physiology has at least one more life to live after the hype around new techniques has passed, but it needs to reinvent itself in light of current knowledge.
随着各种技术在清醒活动动物中进行光学和电生理记录的应用不断增加，以及脑机接口的不断发展，人们可能会想知道急性切片生理学是否已经走到了尽头。我们是否真的已经到了可以放弃使用急性切片的阶段，而大部分关于大脑功能的信息都来自于体内实验呢？我们认为情况并非如此，因为我们对神经系统的基本组成部分（如近天然状态下的离子通道和转运蛋白、神经元区室化和单个神经元计算）的理解还远远不够。我们相信，在可预见的未来，这些领域的问题仍将最好通过急性切片生理学来解决。我们从改善急性切片生理学的角度来探讨这个问题，以便它能够继续为神经科学提供相关和有价值的贡献。我们的结论是，急性切片生理学的死亡是过早撰写的讣告，仅仅是由于科学的兴衰和研究人员的短视。在新技术的炒作过去之后，急性切片生理学至少还有另一次生命，但它需要根据当前的知识进行自我重塑。
