Culture of Rat Cortical cells for MEA recordings

We are pleased to tell you that a shared paper from our group, titled ‘Culture of Rat Primary Cortical Cells for Microelectrode Array Recordings to Screen for Acute and Developmental Neurotoxicity’ has been published in Current Protocols in Toxicology! In this paper we provide a detailed protocol on the main method we use in the Neurotoxicology Research Group, the microelectrode array (MEA). MEA recordings provide a non-invasive platform for extracellular recording of electrical activity of cultured neuronal cells, which enables the evaluation of changes in neuronal (network) function as a sensitive and integrated endpoint for neurotoxicity screening. In the paper we describe an in vitro approach for assessing changes in neuronal network function as a measure for neurotoxicity, using rat primary cortical cultures grown on MEAs. We describe several experimental procedures to address acute, subchronic, and chronic exposure scenarios, as well as the processing and analyzing of MEA and cell viability data. If this sounds interesting to you, check https://doi.org/10.1002/cpz1.158 for more information!