ABSTRACT
Neuronal network biosensors (NNBs) are an in vitro platform for toxicity screening, determining physiological effects, and assessing cellular and subcellular changes in parallel with functional changes. NNBs created by integrating spontaneously active neural cell based networks with functional microelectrode arrays (MEAs) are introduced in this chapter. Recent research has demonstrated that the cultured neuronal networks on MEAs are robust, generate meaningful and quantitative information about toxicant effects, and constitute a broad spectrum biosensing. These NNBs are being applied to a variety of investigative studies on neurotoxicity and cytotoxicity. Specifically, NNBs devices have been designed to respond to a diverse array of compounds that attack neural cells including bacterial toxins, metabolic poisons, toxic metals, neuro-pharmacological compounds, hallucinatory drugs, and epileptogenic agents. In addition, these systems enable the development of multi-network platforms for high throughput. In other words, the technology enables parallel recording from several networks conducting simultaneous tests on multiple compounds.
