The Use of In Vitro Brain Slices for Multidisciplinary Studies of Synaptic Function

The use of cell and tissue culture is well established and, particularly in the hands of biochemists, has contributed considerably to present knowl­ edge of cell function at the single cell level. A complementary technique, which permits the study of the mechanisms of intercellular interactions, appears to be the in vitro brain slice (Yamamoto & McIlwain 1966). These tissue slices are transferred into the artificial environment as intact function­ ing units in which the complicated hardware, the interconnections be-