Magnetic Stimulation of One-Dimensional Neuronal Cultures
Assaf Rotem 1* and Elisha Moses 1
1 Weizmann Institute of Science
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: assaf.rotem{at}weizmann.ac.il.
Submitted on November 13, 2007
Revised on December 28, 2007
Accepted on 30 January 2008
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Abstract |
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Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a remarkable tool for neuroscience research, with a multitude of diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Surprisingly, application of the same magnetic stimulation directly to neurons that are dissected from the brain and grown in-vitro was not reported to activate them to date. Here we report that CNS neurons patterned on large enough one-dimensional rings can be magnetically stimulated in-vitro. In contrast, two-dimensional cultures with comparable size do not respond to excitation. This happens because the one-dimensional pattern enforces an ordering of the axons along the ring, which is designed to follow the lines of the magnetically induced electric field. A small group of sensitive (Initiating) neurons respond even when the network is disconnected, and are presumed to excite the entire network when it is connected. This implies that morphological and electrophysiological properties of single neurons are crucial for magnetic stimulation. We conjecture that the existence of a select group of neurons with higher sensitivity may occur in the brain in-vivo as well, with consequences for TMS.
Key Words:
Cultured Neurons, Magnetic Stimulation, One-Dimensional Neural Network, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
