Activity modulation in human neuroblastoma cultured cells: Towards a biological neuroprocessor

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to analyze the computing capabilities of human neuroblastoma cultured cells and to define stimulation patterns able to modulate the neural activity in response to external stimuli. Multielectrode Arrays Setups have been designed for direct culturing neural cells over silicon or glass substrates, providing the capability to stimulate and record simultaneously populations of neural cells. This paper describes the process of growing human neuroblastoma cells over MEA substrates and tries to modulate the natural physiologic responses of these cells by tetanic stimulation of the culture. If we are able to modify the selective responses of some cells with a external pattern stimuli over different time scales, the neuroblastoma-cultured structure could be trained to process pre-programmed spatio-temporal patterns. We show that the large neuroblastoma networks developed in cultured MEAs are capable of learning: stablishing numerous and dynamic connections, with modifiability induced by external stimuli © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.