Neural Cell Culture Techniques

Cell culture has proven to be a very powerful approach in addressing neurobiological questions. The reasons for this include the ability to isolate the effects of specific variables on cells and, more importantly, to ask questions of a specific cell type in isolation of other cells. The power of cell culture is also its weakness since the nervous system does not consist of cells working in isolation, but rather it consists of communities of cells that interact. Because of this, one must use considerable caution in interpreting data obtained from cultured cells (Juurlink and Hertz, 1985); however, one must also remember the words of Margaret Murray, one of the pioneers of neural cell culture, that “anything that a cell is seen to do in culture must be counted among its potentialities” (Murray, 1977).