Development of a multifunctional platform for extra- and intracellular ionic activities recording

We present the development of a multifunctional platform equipped with an array of silicon nitride micropipettes with dimensions allowing the implementation of extra- and intracellular operations. Micropipettes with outer diameter that ranges from 6 mum down to 300 nm and with walls thicknesses of 500 down to 150 nm are presented. The generic technology developed to fabricate these micropipettes has a number of advantages, including the ability to be implemented as ion-selective electrodes for (A) intracellular and (B) extracellular recordings and as (C) local drug microdispensers.

Chewing-gum flavor affects measures of global complexity of multichannel EEG

Global complexity of spontaneous brain electric activity was studied before and after chewing gum without flavor and with 2 different flavors. One-minute, 19-channel, eyes-closed electroencephalograms (EEG) were recorded from 20 healthy males before and after using 3 types of chewing gum: regular gum containing sugar and aromatic additives, gum containing 200 mg theanine (a constituent of Japanese green tea), and gum base (no sugar, no aromatic additives); each was chewed for 5 min in randomized sequence. Brain electric activity was assessed through Global Omega (Ω)-Complexity and Global Dimensional Complexity (GDC), quantitative measures of complexity of the trajectory of EEG map series in state space; their differences from pre-chewing data were compared across gum-chewing conditions. Friedman Anova (p < 0.043) showed that effects on Ω-Complexity differed significantly between conditions and differences were maximal between gum base and theanine gum. No differences were found using GDC. Global Omega-Complexity appears to be a sensitive measure for subtle, central effects of chewing gum with and without flavor.