Preparations of Vertebrate Central Nervous Systems In Vitro

Scientists in general acknowledge that information on new methods should be spread throughout the scientific community quickly because awareness of techniques may facilitiate the formulation of new and interesting hypotheses. The purpose of this book is to present to a broad spectrum of investigators some "in vitro" techniques that can be used to study the vertebrate central nervous system. Earlier "in vitro" preparation dominated in the laboratories. Then, with the advent of the brain slice, people realized that tissue from the CNS is not as vulnerable to "non-physiological" conditions as was thought previously. This opened up a new ara in neuroscience and today a large number of "in vitro" preparations are available. The brain slice has been described in many publications. It is essentially a section of the central nervous system in time and space, and this of course puts certain limits on the use of the technique. For instance, it is difficult to study properties of large three-dimensional neural networks. It is equally difficult to study processes lasting more than 18-24 hours.
In this book the authors have sought to point out solutions to these problems as well as to indicate how it is possible to push "in vitro" techniques towards their limits.