Quantitative Calcium Imaging in Brain Slices

Studying tissue slices has obvious advantages for cellular physiology, as it avoids the need for an enzyme treatment used in many single cell studies and enables to study visually-identified cell types. Since the majority of cells in a brain tissue slice preserve their structure and their synaptic contacts, this preparation is particularly useful to elucidate the properties of the synaptic interaction. Using Ca2+ imaging techniques, many intriguing questions regarding, for example, the spatial localization and functional role of synaptically-mediated Ca2+ signals or functional properties of subcellularly localized receptor channels can be addressed. Furthermore, the technique can be combined with other methods, like whole-cell patch clamp recordings1–3 and single-cell RT-PCR,4,3 to obtain information about the cell type-specific properties of neural function in various regions of the brain.