Technical Details

For more detailed technical information, please refer to these papers.

• Fully contained, easy to use electronics base
  
  
• Programmable stimulation protocols to set amplitude, frequency and pulse width of stimulation
  
  
• Calibration system to take into account environmental and biological factors in the cellular culture
  
  
• Hand-held, fits easily into any bench-top environment
  
  
• Operates with any standard up-right microscope

• (A) The Si chip harboring the neuronal culture is immersed in external bath solution (EBS) and sealed to the base chamber with vacuum grease in order to electrically isolate the base and bath chambers.
  
• (B) 4 representative video frames from a series captured at one frame per 100 ms, illustrating two cycles of the intracellular Ca2 increase as measured by Fluo3 fluorescence, in response to 1Hz stimulation under continuous illumination.
  
• (C) Changes in Fluo3 fluorescence intensity (arbitrary units) during a 7 s clip of 1 Hz stimulation are shown for a 1 m2 region directly over the dendrite of the cell illustrated in (B) (at arrow).
  
• (D) The movie clip displays an increase in the intensity of Fluo-3 Ca signal triggered by a 2 ms, +4V square pulse applied across Si at 1 Hz under continuous illumination in real time in a day 17 neuron.