Abstract
Recordings from fresh human brain slices derived from surgically resected brain tissue are being used to unravel mechanisms underlying human neurophysiology and for the evaluation of potential therapeutic targets and compounds. Data resulting from these studies provide unique insights into physiologic properties of human neuronal microcircuits. However, substantial limitations still remain with this approach. First, the tissue is always resected from patients, never from healthy controls. Second, the patient population undergoing brain surgery with tissue resection is limited to epilepsy and tumor patients – never from patients with other neurologic disorders. Third, the vast majority of tissue resected is limited largely to temporal cortex and hippocampus, occasionally amygdala. Therefore, the possibility to study brain tissue: (1) from healthy controls; (2) from patients with different neuropathologies; (3) from different brain areas; and (4) from a wide spectrum of ages only exists through autopsy-derived brain tissue. Here we describe methods and results from physiologic recordings of adult human neurons and microcircuits in both surgically derived brain tissue as well as in tissue derived from autopsies. We define postmortem time windows during which physiologic recordings could match data obtained from surgical tissue.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Brain Banking |
| Editors | Ingeborg Huitinga, Maree J. Webster |
| Publisher | Elsevier Science B.V. |
| Chapter | 22 |
| Pages | 319-333 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780444636393 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Publication series
| Name | Handbook of Clinical Neurology |
|---|---|
| Volume | 150 |
| ISSN (Print) | 0072-9752 |
| ISSN (Electronic) | 2212-4152 |
Funding
Funding for this work was provided by Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO VIDI grant 917.10.372) to RMM. HDM received funding for this work from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO VICI grant), ERC StG BrainSignals, and EU H2020 Framework programme grant agreement no. 604102 “Human Brain Project. This work would not have been possible without the excellent collaboration and the services provided by the Netherlands Brain Bank, namely, Bonnie van Huik, along with the pathologists in charge of autopsies, Annemieke Rozemuller, Marianna Bugiani, Paul van der Valk, and Patrick van der Voorn. We also thank Michiel Kooreman, Unga Unmehope, and the rest of the autopsy team for accommodating all nuances pertaining to tissue handling. Thijs Verhoog and Julia Dawitz provided images and recordings from surgically resected brain tissue. Finally and most importantly, we are grateful to all the donors and their families who consented to donate their bodies to science.
Keywords
- acute slices
- autopsy
- brain
- electrophysiology
- human
- neurons
- postmortem
- surgical resection
