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Biophys. J. BioFAST: First Published March 13, 2008. doi:10.1529/biophysj.107.112730
© 2008 by the Biophysical Society.

A more recent version of this article appeared on June 15, 2008.
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ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY

LOW-FREQUENCY STIMULATION INDUCES STABLE TRANSITIONS IN STEREOTYPICAL ACTIVITY IN CORTICAL NETWORKS

Ildiko Vajda 1*, Jaap van Pelt 1, Pieter Wolters 2, Michela Chiappalone 3, Sergio Martinoia 3, Eus J.W. van Someren 2 and Arjen van Ooyen 1

1 Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2 Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, The Netherlands
3 University of Genova, Italy

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ivajda{at}falw.vu.nl.

Submitted on May 14, 2007
Revised on June 24, 2007
Accepted on 23 January 2008


  Abstract
Reverberating spontaneous synchronized brain activity is believed to play an important role in neural information processing. Whether and how external stimuli can influence this spontaneous activity is poorly understood. Since periodic synchronized network activity is also prominent in in vitro neuronal cultures, we used cortical cultures grown on multielectrode arrays to examine how spontaneous activity is affected by external stimuli. Spontaneous network activity before and after a period of low-frequency electrical stimulation was quantified in several ways. Our results show that the initially stable pattern of stereotypical spontaneous activity was transformed into another activity pattern that remained stable for at least one hour. The transformations consisted of changes in single site and culture-wide network activity as well as in the spatiotemporal dynamics of network bursting. We show for the first time that low-frequency electrical stimulation can induce long-lasting alterations in spontaneous activity of cortical neuronal networks. We discuss whether the observed transformations in network activity could represent a switch in attractor state.

Key Words: attractor state, dissociated culture, memory, multi-electrode array, network bursting, slow-oscillations




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Copyright © 2008 by the Biophysical Society.