Imaging pathological activities of human brain tissue in organotypic culture

Background-Insights into human brain diseases may emerge from tissue obtained after operations on patients.However techniques requiring transduction of transgenes carried by viral vectors cannot be applied to acute human tissue.New Method-We show that organotypic culture techniques can be used to maintain tissue from patients with three different neurological syndromes for several weeks in vitro.Optimized viral vector techniques and promoters for transgene expression are described.Results-Region-specific differences in neuronal form, firing pattern and organization as well as pathological activities were maintained over 40-50 days in culture.Both adeno-associated virus