Articles

  • the Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences

Article

Original

Exp Neurobiol 2004; 13(2): 75-83

Published online December 31, 2004

© The Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences

Characterization of Signal Transmission in Hippocampus Using Multi-ElectrodeArray (MEA) System

Ji-Hye Cho, So-Young Kim and Ji-Ho Park*

Department of Medical Science, Graduate School of East-West Medical Science, Kyung Hee University, Yongin 449-701, Korea

Correspondence to: *To whom correspondence should be addressed.
TEL: 031-201-2187, FAX: 031-201-2187
e-mail: jihopark@khu.ac.kr

Abstract

It is a painful task to investigate neural circuit in hippocampus because of the com-plexity and accessibility. Although it has many difficulties, previous researchers provided a good amount of information about hippocampal neural circuit. However, it is still many unsolved questions in the complex signal process in it. To address questions, we a-dapted a powerful new system which can deal with neural circuits of it. We applied the rat acute hippocampal brain slice system into Multi-Electrode Array (MEA) system. The MEA system consists with 60 individual channel array, stimulator and amplifier units. The stimulation of CA1 region tended to have more distributed signal transmission than that of CA3. Signal characters were very similar within intralayers and it was signifi-cantly different among interlayers. The signal transmission of spikes from in CA1 py-ramidal cell, seemed to be directional rather than omnidirectional and it could not pass through the granular layer of dentate gyrus. Moreover, repeated stimuli caused uneven temporal responses. Simultaneous extracellular stimulation and recording of local field potentials with spike activity of 60 sites allowed the analysis of network activity with high spatiotemporal resolution.

Keywords: Hippocampus, signal transmission, neural network, MEA system, brain slic