Validation of a bench-top culturing and electrophysiogical recording chamber for neurophysiological trials

Multi Electrode Array (MEA) technology allows to non-invasively record neural culture activity, overcoming several limits of traditional neuropharmacological and neurophysiological studies. To obtain reliable results and to ensure experiments reproducibility, it is necessary to maintain the cells in a controlled environment, which allows the proper growth of the culture. For this reason, MEAs recording setups need to be coupled with an environmental parameters control system, keeping CO 2 and O 2 concentration, temperature, humidity and pH within physiological ranges. In this work, we have validated a bench-top chamber prototype for long-term continuous and parallel recordings from multiple MEAs. We first validated the MEA acquisition chain through the comparison with a commercial gold-standard MEA recording system. Then, we tested a control unit based on environmental parameters sensors. To test the maintenance of optimal environmental conditions for cell cultures, long-term measurements of parameters were performed, alongside with measurements of culture medium evaporation rate and osmolarity. After demonstrating the capability of the setup to support cultures growth, neurophysiological trials were conducted on neuronal cell cultures inside the chamber. Through the comparison with the Benchmark system, we demonstrated that the custom bench-top system can monitor the cell electrical activity producing similar range of values for most of the features computed.