Skip to main content
. 2020 Mar 20;9:e55471. doi: 10.7554/eLife.55471

Figure 2. Blebbistatin treatment increases axonal signal propagation velocity.

Figure 2.

(A) Single propagating event recorded along four electrodes inside a microchannel. Each colored signal trace corresponds to an electrode from a single microchannel. Two microchannels are indicated by asterisks in the phase-contrast image of hippocampal neurons cultured on a μEF platform at DIV8 (scale bar = 50 μm). (B) Activity maps of vehicle and 3 μM blebbistatin (Bleb) treated cultures at DIV11. Each pixel corresponds to one recording electrode and the mean firing rate (MFR) is color-coded for each electrode. Notice that μEFs allow for the recording of both somal and axonal activity. Below are shown raster plots of 300 s of activity from 16 active electrodes of the somal compartment and from 16 electrodes within the microchannels (one electrode per microchannel). (C) MFR from the electrodes in the microchannels for vehicle and Bleb-treated cultures (DIV11-14). (D) Median propagation velocity (± SD) for vehicle and blebbistatin-treated cultures at DIV11, 12, and 14 (propagating events pooled from 25 to 43 microchannels, from 3 to 4 independent μEFs). Unpaired t-test or Mann-Whitney test; ns = not significant, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001 and ****p<0.0001. (E) Frequency distribution of the propagation velocity domains (0.05 m/s binning) at DIV11 for both conditions.