서강대학교

초록 (요약문)

Anesthesia is essential to reduce a patient's pain during a dermatologic procedure or surgery. There are two main types of anesthesia: chemical and physical. In the case of chemical anesthesia, the anesthesia time before and after the procedure is much longer than the procedure time, and the side effects such as breathing difficulties and skin rashes may occur depending on the patient. Cryo-anesthetic, one of the purely physical anesthesia treatments, uses pure physical principles and is non-allergenic, with a much shorter anesthesia time than chemical anesthesia. Despite the necessity to understand the behavior of neuron signal transmission during freezing and recovery in order to further develop cryo-anesthesia technology, research at the cellular level is quite limited. A lack of rapid and localized cooling technologies, in particular, hinders research on the safe and efficient blockage of neuron signaling and its influence on another neuron cell via the cellular network. Here, we introduce a novel cryo-neuromodulation platform consisting of a microelectrode array (MEA) system, a microfluidic device, and a high-speed precision probe-type cooling device that provides localized cooling temperature. We explored the temperature conditions that cause silencing and recovery of neuronal signaling without cell damage and found the advantages of fast and local anesthesia quantitively. Furthermore, we investigated inter-network neuron signal by connecting two networks with axons using a microfluidic chip to characterize inter-network neuron signal and discussed the neuron signal by cooling.