Organotypic monolayer cultures of nervous tissue

Abstract

Cultivation of nervous tissue by means of the roller-tube technique yields thin organotypic cultures. Explants or slices prepared from 1- to 20-day-old rats are embedded in a plasma clot on flying coverslips and cultivated for weeks in roller-tubes. Due to the flattening of the tissue, individual nerve cells are often arranged in monolayer thickness and can, therefore, be viewed with phase-contrast microscopy. This technique is utilized to culture and co-culture nervous tissue derived from various brain regions. The degree of organotypic organization depends on the age of the animals used for culturing. Stable intracellular recordings arae obtained from nerve cells which are impaled under visual control. In view of the accessibility of individual living cells, this approach seems to be particularly well-suited for physiological and pharmacological studies on morphologically identified nerve cells.