Organotypic Culture of Developing Striatum: Pharmacological Induction of Gene Expression

The major advantage of the organotypic culture of striatal slices is that the organotypic culture preserves much of the physiologically relevant environment of striatal neurons. The organotypic culture represents a system more anatomically and physiologically relevant than cultures of cell lines and dissociated primary striatal cells (1 ,2 ). The maintenance of the infrastructure of cell-cell interactions in striatal slices allows analysis of neuronal development and cell biology of striatal neurons in an approximately in situ condition. This special property and the experimentally accessible condition of cells in the slices makes organotypic cultures of the striatum a value compromise paradigm between in vivo whole animal and in vitro dissociated cell culture approaches.