This do-it-yourself manual describes complete recipes and protocols for biological scientists, particularly neurobiologists, who want to learn how to grow neurons in culture and how to do it well. Moreover, it provides an understanding of the principles behind the protocols. Offering a more coherent overview of techniques than the usual compendium of methods sections, Culturing Nerve Cells also takes into account the numerous details that can make the difference between success and failure by asking experienced culturists to share their technical expertise. Introductory chapters present a brief course on the nuts and bolts of culturing all types of nerve cells—including the kinds of cultures available and which might be the best for a specific application—methods for cell dissociation, culture media, and substrates, and a description of the techniques needed to characterize and study cultures. More than 20 experts then describe the culture systems that they have developed, including the details of each protocol as well as all of the tricks, lore, and troubleshooting techniques that never appear in the scientific literature. Contents: A User's Guide. Getting Started. General Principles. Types of Nerve Cell Cultures, Their Advantages and Limitations. Primary Dissociated Cell Cultures of Neuronal Tissue. Characterizing and Studying Neuronal Cultures. Culture of Specific Cell Types. Isolated Chick Neurons for the Study of Axonal Growth. Culturing Spinal Neurons and Muscle Cells from Xenopus Embryos. Culturing the Large Neurons of Aplysia. Tissue Culture of Mammalian Autonomic Neurons. Methodologies for the Culture and Experimental Use of the PC12 Rat Pheochromocytoma Cell Line. Cell Culture of Neocortex and Basal Forebrain from Postnatal Rats. Rat Hippocampal Neurons in Low-Density Culture. Cerebellar Cells in Culture. Astroglia in Culture. Tissue Culture Methods for the Study of Myelination. Organotypic Slice Cultures of Neural Tissue.