Design and application of a novel brain slice system that permits independent electrophysiological recordings from multiple slices

A multi-slice recording system for stable late phase hippocampal long-term potentiation experiments

“…Firstly, the software Notocord ® was employed. So far, in combination with the SliceMaster only Spike2 (Stopps et al, 2004;West et al, 2009; www.ced.co.uk) had been used. Among these software other programs can be utilized for LTP experiments (for an overview see Bortolotto et al, 2001) (Anderson and Collingridge, 2007;www.winltp.com)] and the ones which are customized [for example written with Wave-Metrics' Igor (www.wavemetrics.com) or National Instruments' LabView (www.ni.com)].…”

“…The system is semi-automated allowing one operator to record simultaneously from an assembly of up to eight brain slices. The system has been described in detail by Stopps et al (2004). Briefly, the SliceMaster used for this report consists of three temperature-controlled integrated brain slice chambers and can be upgraded with five more.…”

“…A suction pump discards the used liquid via the outflow into a waste box or recycles it back to the original reservoir. Unlike the gravity-fed system described previously (Stopps et al, 2004), a Pumped Perfusion System (PPS; Scientifica Limited, East Sussex, UK) was used in this study. Gassing and recirculation of solutions is possible and a flow rate between 0.1 and 20 mL min −1 can be chosen.…”

“…The first two points were already addressed by Stopps et al (2004) who established a system allowing electrophysiological recordings from up to eight brain slices simultaneously and hence increasing throughput and optimizing tissue use from animals. In this study, mechanical instability compromising recording quality especially over a longer period of time is addressed.…”

Independent positioning of microelectrodes for multisite recordings in vitro

“…recordings from multiple specimen as acute slices or OHSCs (Stopps et al, 2004). The system also could be combined with system integrated microelectrode arrays thus enabling recordings in a sandwich configuration of population activities and in addition, of extracellular and intracellular single unit potentials as well as ion concentrations in particular from tissue regions not accessible from an underlying microelectrode array.…”