Baptisms of fire or death knells for acute-slice physiology in the age of 'omics' and light?

Khurana, S., Li, W. K. (October 2013) Baptisms of fire or death knells for acute-slice physiology in the age of 'omics' and light? Reviews in the Neurosciences, 24 (5). pp. 527-536. ISSN 0334-1763

URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24077618
DOI: 10.1515/revneuro-2013-0028

Abstract

With increasing use of various techniques to record optically and electrophysiologically from awake behaving animals and the growing developments of brain-machine interfaces, one might wonder if the use of acute-slice physiology is on its deathbed. Have we actually arrived at a stage where we can abandon the use of acute slices, with most of the information about brain functions coming from in vivo experiments? We do not believe that this is the case, given that our understanding of the nuts and bolts of the nervous system, such as ion channels and transporters in near-native state, neuronal compartmentalization, and single-neuron computation, is far from complete. We believe that in the foreseeable future, questions in these fields will still be best addressed by acute-slice physiology. We approach this review from the perspective of improving acute-slice physiology so it can continue to provide relevant and valuable contributions to neuroscience. We conclude that the death of acute-slice physiology is an obituary prematurely written, merely due to waxing and waning trends in science and the shortsightedness of investigators. Acute-slice physiology has at least one more life to live after the hype around new techniques has passed, but it needs to reinvent itself in light of current knowledge.

Item Type: Paper
Subjects: Investigative techniques and equipment
Investigative techniques and equipment > electrophysiology
CSHL Authors:
Communities: CSHL labs > Zhong lab
Depositing User: Matt Covey
Date: October 2013
Date Deposited: 05 Nov 2013 21:57
Last Modified: 05 Nov 2013 21:57
Related URLs:
URI: https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/28839

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