Electrical neurostimulation of isolated sympathetic nervous rat cells of the superior cervical ganglia

The electrical neuromodulation of the autonomous nervous system is a relatively new field of research with targets such as relief of pain by spinal cord stimulation or deep brain stimulation for Parkinsons disease. Regarding the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, one idea is to electrically stimulate e.g. the sympathetic nervous system, which can typically only be influenced by release of medication, increasing the force of the contraction and efficiency of the heart. This would benefit patients suffering from heart failure according to reduced pumping function. For a detailed investigation and functional characterization of the intracardiac nervous system, sympathetic cardiac cells from neonatal rats have been isolated and preprocessed with preparation medium, enzyme solution, incubation medium and final medium. Divided in stimulation and control groups (n = 27), the cells were kept in a culture cabinet at 37 °C and the stimulation group additionally has been stimulated for 48h in culture dishes with two graphite electrodes in each well. We show the design and realization of the neurostimulation system based on a microcontroller, offering independent control of various stimulation patterns and adjustable frequencies, voltage amplitudes and burst durations for a deeper knowledge of stimulation results and most effective parameters.