Our Group organises 3000+ Global Conferenceseries Events every year across USA, Europe & Asia with support from 1000 more scientific Societies and Publishes 700+ Open Access Journals which contains over 50000 eminent personalities, reputed scientists as editorial board members.

Open Access Journals gaining more Readers and Citations
700 Journals and 15,000,000 Readers Each Journal is getting 25,000+ Readers

This Readership is 10 times more when compared to other Subscription Journals (Source: Google Analytics)

Research Article

Engineered In Vitro Feed-Forward Networks

Anupama Natarajan1, Thomas B. DeMarse2, Peter Molnar3, and James J. Hickman1*

1The Nanoscience Technology Center, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32826, USA

2Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611 and the NanoScience Technology Center, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32826, USA

3The Nanoscience Technology Center, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32826, USA. He is now in the Department of Zoology, University of West Hungary, Szombathely, H-9700, Hungary

Corresponding Author:
James J. Hickman
University of Central Florida
Nanoscience Technology Center 12424 Research Parkway
Suite 400, Orlando, FL 32826 USA
Tel: 407-823-1925
Fax: 407-882-2819
E-mail: jhickman@mail.ucf.edu

Received date: October 23, 2012; Accepted date: December 14, 2012; Published date: December 14, 2012

Citation: Natarajan A, DeMarse TB, Molnar P, Hickman JJ (2013) Engineered In Vitro Feed-Forward Networks. J Biotechnol Biomater 3:153. doi:10.4172/2155- 952X.1000153

Copyright: © 2013 Natarajan A, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Microelectrode arrays (MEAs) are a promising new method for high throughput neuronal assays. These arrays permit non-invasive, detailed optical and multichannel electrophysiological interrogation of functional neuronal networks for drug development or neurotoxicity assessment. There has also been an effort by a number of groups to develop in vitro analogues of in vivo brain circuitry or physiological systems to serve as well defined models of in vivo tissue. However, a key hurdle in these efforts has been the ability to define and constrain the directionality of  pathways within these systems. This issue is particularly relevant during the recreation of in vivo brain architectures that communicate through defined pathways, often with specific directionality. In this paper, we demonstrate a line/ gap topology that promotes the growth of axonal directionally between neurons that have been engineered into a living analogue of a feed-forward neural architecture. The effective connectivity of this architecture was estimated from neural activity measured by a multichannel microelectrode array and quantified using conditional Granger causality analysis. Plasticity was then induced to determine whether 1) LTP/LTD was supported in this novel architecture and 2) whether plasticity differed from random network controls. We show that this method promotes unidirectional feed-forward relative to opposing feedback pathways in spontaneously active networks. This study also represents the first attempt to use the Granger causality metric for the assessment of the activity of a biological neuronal network in which connectivity is highly defined.

Keywords

Google Scholar citation report
Citations : 2154

Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials received 2154 citations as per Google Scholar report

Indexed In
  • Index Copernicus
  • Google Scholar
  • Sherpa Romeo
  • Open J Gate
  • Genamics JournalSeek
  • Academic Keys
  • ResearchBible
  • China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI)
  • Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA)
  • Electronic Journals Library
  • RefSeek
  • Hamdard University
  • EBSCO A-Z
  • OCLC- WorldCat
  • SWB online catalog
  • Virtual Library of Biology (vifabio)
  • Publons
  • Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research
  • Euro Pub
  • ICMJE
Recommended Journals
Share This Page
Top