Density-dependence of functional development in spiking cortical networks grown in vitro.

During development, the mammalian brain differentiates into specialized regions with distinct functional abilities. While many factors contribute to functional specialization, we explore the effect of neuronal density on the development of neuronal interactions in vitro. Two types of cortical networks, namely, dense and sparse with 50,000 and 12,500 total cells, respectively, are studied.