Our Preclinical Slice Electrophysiology Services

PsychoGenics offers expert ex vivo electrophysiology services, enabling the precise measurement of neuronal activity in acutely prepared brain slices. Through the examination of synaptic currents and membrane potentials, you gain valuable insights into the mechanisms of your drug’s action.

Directly visualizing the structure of the brain slice enables precise placement of stimulation and recording electrodes near or within the desired cells. Furthermore, the absence of the blood-brain barrier in this ex vivo setup facilitates direct access to compounds, providing a detailed picture of how your drug works.

Long-term potentiation is a dynamic mechanism that leads to the enhanced functional strength of synaptic connections, persisting for hours or more. It is widely considered to be a cellular and molecular correlate of memory, contributing to various cognitive processes. Therefore, LTP can be seen as a partial component underlying memory and cognition. 

PsychoGenics offers numerous models of neurodegenerative, neurodevelopmental, and mental illness, demonstrating impairments in both cognitive and memory-related behaviors, as well as LTP deficits. 

PsychoGenics offers high-quality patch clamp electrophysiology services. This is a widely employed technique utilized in ex vivo or tissue culture preparations to manipulate the membrane voltage of individual cells and measure two key aspects:

1. The flow of ionic currents across the cell membrane
2. Variations in membrane potential

The neuronal membrane allows current flow through voltage-gated ion channels present in the cell body and dendrites, as well as via ligand-gated ion channels concentrated at post-synaptic sites. By implementing suitable pharmacological inhibitors, these currents can be precisely isolated and accurately quantified.