Spontaneous cortical discharge rates in control, activity-blocked, and neurotrophin-treated activity-blocked organotypic cerebellar cultures
| Cultures | No. of units recorded | Cortical spikes/sec (mean ± SEM) |
|---|---|---|
| Control (n = 6) | 21 | 0.73 ± 0.14 |
| Mg2+/TTX (n = 11) | 41 | 1.20 ± 0.11 |
| Mg2+/TTX/BDNF (n = 12) | 41 | 0.75 ± 0.07 |
| Control (n = 9) | 25 | 0.61 ± 0.06 |
| Mg2+/TTX (n = 11) | 46 | 1.39 ± 0.14 |
| Mg2+/TTX/NT-3 (n = 10) | 34 | 1.48 ± 0.23 |
| Control (n = 8) | 36 | 0.78 ± 0.09 |
| Mg2+/TTX (n = 11) | 41 | 1.65 ± 0.22 |
| Mg2+/TTX/NT-4 (n = 9) | 42 | 0.91 ± 0.07 |
Cortical activity was recorded extracellulary from control, activity-blocked, and neurotrophin-treated activity-blocked cultures between 14 and 16 DIV. Activity-blocked and neurotrophin-treated activity-blocked cultures were allowed to recover for at least 45 min before collection of data (see Materials and Methods). n is the number of cerebellar cultures from which the data were obtained. One-way ANOVA followed by the Tukey HSD multiple comparisons test indicates the following. (1) The untreated activity-blocked cultures in all cases exhibited higher discharge rates than the controls (p = 0.013, p = 0.010, andp < 0.001, respectively). (2) The BDNF- or NT-4-treated activity-blocked cultures had cortical activity similar to controls and significantly different from the untreated activity-blocked cultures (p = 0.003 and 0.002, respectively). (3) The NT-3-treated activity-blocked cultures had discharge rates similar to the untreated activity-blocked group.