From the "I need to get out more" department, the header for this paper has had me laughing all day. Yes, I know better, but I keep getting mental images of wired-up rats operating telegraph machines with their brains.
SOS! Is anyone listening! Help! We are trapped in a lab with a bunch of weird humans! We are out of cheese! Help!
Yes, I know this is a good and serious paper with patch clamps and electro-chemistry and cell-culture and math and physics and all those lovely and serious things. But the circuit diagrams aren't helping.
Repeat: We are trapped in a lab and we are out of cheese!
I think my brain is trying to defend itself because every time I read about interfacing living cells with circuits directly, it kinda creeps me out. Some people are weirded out by needles or snakes, I am squicked by phrases like "Field-effect transistors form spontaneously capacitive junctions with cultured cells from rat brains." That's just how I roll. It is a cool paper, though.
Citation:
Neurons from rat brain coupled to transistors
S. Vassanelli, P. Fromherz
Appl. Phys. A 65, 85–88 (1997)
