Wilson NR, Ty MT, Ingber DE, Whitesides GM, Sur M, Liu G. Synaptic Reorganization in Scaled Networks of Controlled Size. JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE 27:13581-13589, 2007

Abstract Neurons in plastic regions of the brain undergo fundamental changes in the number of cells connecting to them as a result of development, plasticity and disease. Across these same time periods, functional changes in cellular and synaptic physiology are known to occur and are often characterized as developmental features of these periods. However, it remains possible that many such changes are direct consequences of the modified degree of partnering, and that neurons intrinsically scale their physiological parameters with network size. To systematically vary a recurrent network's number of neurons while measuring its synaptic properties, we used microfabricated extracellular matrix adhesive islands created with soft lithography to culture neuronal clusters of precise sizes, and as......