Abstract
Understanding the rules of synapse dynamics in the context of development, learning, and nervous system disorders is an important part of several fields of neuroscience. Despite significant methodological advances, observations of structural dynamics of synapses still present a significant experimental challenge. In this chapter we describe a set of techniques that allow repetitive observations of synaptic structures in vitro in organotypic cultures of rodent hippocampus. We describe culturing of slices, transfection with reporter-carrying plasmids, repetitive imaging of dendritic spines with confocal laser scanning microscopy and analysis of spine morphology dynamics.
Authors contributed equally, correspondence may be addressed to either.
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De Roo, M., Ribic, A. (2017). Analyzing Structural Plasticity of Dendritic Spines in Organotypic Slice Culture. In: Poulopoulos, A. (eds) Synapse Development. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1538. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6688-2_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6688-2_19
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Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
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Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-6688-2
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