The effect of training of cultured neuronal networks, can they learn ?

Dissociated 1 or 2 days old postnatal rat cortical cells were cultured onto multi electrode arrays (MEA´s) with 61 electrode sites. They were trained with two protocols, i.e. the tetanic stimulation method from the report by Jimbo et al. (1998) and the selective adaptation protocol (report Shahaf and Marom, 2001). Tetanic stimulation training changed the network response significantly. But training had no lasting effect, which means no learning result. The selective adaptation protocol did also not lead to lasting learning effects