A do-it-yourself manual for culturing nerve cells, complete with recipes and protocols.

This second edition volume details the latest aspects of neural cells covering the practical and theoretical considerations of each techniques involved. Chapters guide readers through a general overview of the neuronal culturing principles, cell line models for neural cells, the isolation and propagation of primary cultures, stem cells, transfection and transduction of neural cultures, and other more advanced techniques. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Practical and easy to use, Neuronal Cell Culture: Methods and Protocols, Second Edition aims to be of interest to scientists at all levels studying cell culture models for neuroscientific studies.

At the crossroads of art and science, Beautiful Brain presents Nobel Laureate Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s contributions to neuroscience through his groundbreaking artistic brain imagery. Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934) was the father of modern neuroscience and an exceptional artist. He devoted his life to the anatomy of the brain, the body’s most complex and mysterious organ. His superhuman feats of visualization, based on fanatically precise techniques and countless hours at the microscope, resulted in some of the most remarkable illustrations in the history of science. Beautiful Brain presents a selection of his exquisite drawings of brain cells, brain regions, and neural circuits with accessible descriptive commentary. These drawings are explored from multiple perspectives: Larry W. Swanson describes Cajal’s contributions to neuroscience; Lyndel King and Eric Himmel explore his artistic roots and achievement; Eric A. Newman provides commentary on the drawings; and Janet M. Dubinsky describes contemporary neuroscience imaging techniques. This book is the companion to a traveling exhibition opening at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis in February 2017, marking the first time that many of these works, which are housed at the Instituto Cajal in Madrid, have been seen outside of Spain. Beautiful Brain showcases Cajal’s contributions to neuroscience, explores his artistic roots and achievement, and looks at his work in relation to contemporary neuroscience imaging, appealing to general readers and professionals alike.

Intended for use by advanced undergraduate, graduate and medical students, this book presents a study of the unique biochemical and physiological properties of neurons, emphasising the molecular mechanisms that generate and regulate their activity.

This 1999 edition of The Neural Crest contains comprehensive information about the neural crest, a structure unique to the vertebrate embryo, which has only a transient existence in early embryonic life. The ontogeny of the neural crest embodies the most important issues in developmental biology, as the neural crest is considered to have played a crucial role in evolution of the vertebrate phylum. Data that analyse neural crest ontogeny in murine and zebrafish embryos have been included in this revision. This revised edition also takes advantage of recent advances in our understanding of markers of neural crest cell subpopulations, and a full chapter is now devoted to cell lineage analysis. The major research breakthrough since the first edition has been the introduction of molecular biology to neural crest research, enabling an elucidation of many molecular mechanisms of neural crest development. This book is essential reading for students and researchers in developmental biology, cell biology, and neuroscience.

The techniques of tissue culture were introduced at the beginning of this century. They have become more and more popular as it is realized that they are not as difficult or as esoteric as some early protagonists liked to maintain. Most of the work performed with culture methods has simply concerned cell growth and survival. Biologists have long used culture approaches to provide a simple system in which to study cell division and multiplication. Any pharmacology done on cultured tissue was largely toxicological or as part of a screening programme for poten tial anti-cancer drugs. In the last decade there has been a great increase in the use of excitable cells in tissue culture. Nerves and muscles from a wide variety of sources can maintain their highly differentiated properties in culture. Such cultures offer an attractive preparation for use in physiological and pharmacological investigations. Consequently, a vast amount of work has been produced, and this book is an attempt to review it. It is hoped that this will introduce physiologists and pharmacologists to the potential of culture methods for their experiments and also indicate to more traditional tissue culture users further possible areas of interest. By being more comprehensive in scope and by trying to concentrate largely on drug actions, I hope that the present volume usefully extends the treatment of the subject begun earlier in the excellent works by Crain (1976) and Nelson and Lieberman (1981).