Long-Term Cultivation and Recording from Organotypic Brain Slices on High-density Micro-electrode Arrays

Organotypic brain slices are a standard preparation in neuroscience research. Here we present a method to study hippocampal neuronal networks in vitro by cultivating the respective slices directly on top of high-density multi-electrode array (HD-MEA) chips for more than 30 days. Directly cultivating brain slices on the HD-MEA chips provides close neuron-to-electrode contacts and the possibility to maintain a register of cell identities, with respect to the electrode locations and recorded activity, over weeks. Moreover, very thin cell layers can be obtained in later stages of the cultivation procedure. The high resolution of the HD-MEA chips, with over 10,000 electrodes, allows for single cell resolution signal acquisition and mapping of the network activities.