The Use of Hippocampal Slices for the Study of Energy Metabolism

Mammalian brain slices are used to study a broad range of cellular neural functions, and their use as a neuroscience tool has greatly expanded in the past decade, especially in the realm of electrophysiological determinations. Warburg (1923) initially developed tissue slice techniques to study metabolism in vitro, and in the 1950s, brain slice research, developed by Quastel and Elliott, was still centered on metabolic phenomena. In those studies, McIIwain, Thomas, and others (Elliott, 1955; McIlwain, 1953, 1961; McIlwain and Bachelard, 1971; Thomas, 1956; Thomas, 1957) measured high-energy phosphate and related metabolite concentrations in cortical slices for different incubation parameters.