To better study this interaction, a hybrid neuro-robotic architecture was developed, where a biological neuronalnetwork was able to communicate with a small wheeled robot. The robot had to perform an obstacle-avoidingtask and every time the robot hits an obstacle, the biological network receives a tetanic stimulation, aimed atstrengthening connectivity. Here, we investigated the impact of tetanic stimulation on network activity ofhippocampal culture grown on grids of 60 substrate-embedded microelectrode arrays. We found that closed-looptetanic stimulation produced an enhancement of activity in terms of evoked response, not seen in control andsham (i.e. open-loop tetanic stimulation) experiments. The obtained results demonstrate thatactivity-dependent interaction with the environment is essential to significantly impact network behavior.
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