Primary Striatal Neuronal Culture

Abstract

The incredible in vivo complexity of nervous system and activity oftentimes prevents the neuroscientist from attempting to understand how individual neural cells or a specific phenotype of neural cells contribute to a given function of the nervous system. To elucidate intercellular and intracellular mechanisms, the complexity therefore needs to be reduced experimentally. Primary neural culture is an in vitro approach attempting to reduce this complexity, and establishes a relatively purified model for studying the nervous system at a single cell level. Because the culture environment can be readily controlled, neural cultures can be set up to possess biological properties similar or distinct to the original tissue. Research data from the culture study can therefore be valuable to predict the behavior of specific neural cells in vivo.