ARTIFICIAL CONTROL OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF NEURAL NETWORK PATTERN WITH AGAROSE MICROCHAMBER ON MULTI-ELECTRODE ARRAY CHIP

摘要

We developed a new type of cell cultivation system using a mild microfabrication technique and soft material. The system is based on the microchamber array that is made of low-temperature melting agarose embedded ITO/Chromium multi-electrode array. Cells are set in the agarose micro-chamber array (AMC array) by cell-handling with micromanipulator made of glass and cultivated in agarose micro-chamber array. Only the neighboring cells distributed in each chamber can make connection with each other by microtunnels. And this chamber is capable of changing the pattern of the structures during cultivation due to additional microtunnels by the scanning of 1.8-um spot heating using 1064-nm Nd:YAG focused laser beam through the objective lens of optical microscope. The electrodes installed in each microchamber enable us to electrically stimulate each cell and record its response during long-term cultivation. Thus the connections among each microchamber can be rearranged even when neural cells are cultivated in microchamber array. Using this system, we have succeeded in creating the additional connections such as tunnels between two adjacent microchambers one by one according to the progress of neural network formation, and succeeded in comparing the electrical responses among different neural network patterns with same neural cells.