Neuropharmacological Analyses in Organotypic Cultures of Spinal Cord and Dorsal Root Ganglia

Abstract

This chapter discusses neuropharmacological analyses in the organotypic cultures of spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia. The organotypic cultures of spinal cord explants provide valuable preparations for analyses of many basic problems in neurobiology, both during critical stages of development in vitro as well as after maturation of complex neuronal network functions characteristic of these cells. Electrophysiological analyses of spinal cord tissues explanted from rat as well as human embryos provided the first demonstration that central nervous system (CNS) neurons could form functional synaptic networks manifested by the generation of complex bioelectric discharges during months of isolation in vitro . When cord tissues are explanted together with sensory dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons, DRG neurites have been shown to project preferentially into dorsal, rather than into equally available ventral, regions of the cord and to establish specialized dorsal horn synaptic networks. The dorsal horn network discharges evoked in these cord explants by application of electric stimuli to the DRG inputs show a remarkable degree of pharmacological specificity.