FUNCTIONAL ACTIVITY

Electrophysiological recording.

Multi Electrodes Arrays (MEA) compatibility approach enables continuous electrophysiological recordings providing data to evaluate neuronal functional activity.

In collaboration with Axion Biosystems we have developed MEA-capable high-throughput compartmentalized microfluidic devices. A network can be monitored within all types of NeuroFluidics MEA line microfluidic devices. Electrodes are underneath compartments and microchannels. They are in direct contact with neurons (soma in channels and neurites in microchannels).

Functional compartmentalization.

Anatomically, the cell bodies of neurons are located in the spinal cord or in the brain and are connected to other cells (skin, neurons, muscles, etc.) by their axonal projections. To reproduce this human physiological compartmentalization, NETRI has developed NeuroFluidics MEA devices, composed of 3 isolated compartments but connected by microchannels. Because microchannels are micrometric in cross-section, they allow the passage of axons from one compartment to another, leaving the neurons somas in the compartment itself and they fluidly isolate the compartments from each other thanks to their fluidic resistance.

Coupled compartmentalization and electrophysiology allows:

Constant monitoring of an entire network while applying cells or compounds on one compartment only
Recording spontaneous and induced action potential propagation velocity
Couple a functional analysis to a phenotypical analysis
Impact of non-neural cells on neurons’s functional activity

Utility software.

We have developed at NETRI a free utility software, UpLink, which runs locally with Axis Navigator, the Axion software.

The NeuroFluidics MEA layouts are recognized by Axis Navigator. UpLink can:

Fetch the relevant files (raw, spike and burst thresholds etc…) from an active Axis Navigator session
Process Axion Metrics and Network Metrics per microfluidic channel
Generate an Excel file with the channel-specific metrics in a highly sortable format. UpLink can also generate channel specific .spk files for use in NMT or standard Axion .csv files.
Generate dynamic rasterplot with geographical relevance

FUNCTIONAL ACTIVITY

Electrophysiological recording.

Functional compartmentalization.

Utility software.

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