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Organotypic brain slice culture is an ex vivo method in which CNS tissue slices are maintained on a stable support with culture medium and oxygen access, preserving tissue architecture, multiple resident brain cell types, and network organization better than dissociated cultures. The commonly used membrane-interface method places brain or hippocampal slices on a porous membrane insert at the air-liquid interface; culture medium reaches the tissue through the membrane while the slice remains oxygenated from the humidified incubator atmosphere. Readouts depend on the experimental aim: slice survival can be monitored by propidium iodide uptake or LDH release, tissue organization by immunostaining, live structural changes by repeated imaging, and neuronal/network function by electrophysiology or multi-electrode recordings.

Cardiac voltage-sensitive optical mapping records changes in transmembrane potential from cardiac tissue by staining the preparation with a voltage-sensitive dye and imaging fluorescence changes during electrical activation; the resulting optical action potentials can be used to map activation time, action potential duration, conduction velocity, wavefront propagation, and arrhythmia dynamics. The optical signal represents a relative fluorescence change from a tissue volume rather than a single-cell intracellular recording, so spatial resolution, sampling rate, voltage resolution, optical magnification, light penetration, and motion control must be considered together when interpreting optical action potentials.

Neuronal voltage-sensitive dye imaging detects membrane-potential-dependent optical changes from dyes associated with neuronal membranes, enabling optical recording of electrical activity from single neurons, dendrites, axons, spines, or neuronal populations in brain slices and cultured neurons. VSD signals are typically reported as fractional fluorescence or absorbance changes over baseline, such as ΔF/F or ΔI/I, and published protocols use high-speed cameras or photodiode arrays because neuronal voltage signals occur on millisecond time scales. Fast VSD imaging can be applied at two common scales: bulk staining of brain slices to measure circuit-level spatiotemporal activity, and single-cell loading or biolistic delivery to record membrane-potential transients from individual neuronal compartments. Optical signals should be interpreted as membrane-potential-related readouts, and validation by simultaneous electrophysiology or pharmacological controls is recommended when the experimen

Acute brain-slice whole-cell patch-clamp recording measures membrane voltage or ionic current from visually targeted cells in living brain slices; after giga-seal formation, the membrane under the pipette is ruptured to provide low-resistance electrical access to the cell interior, enabling current-clamp analysis of excitability and voltage-clamp analysis of synaptic or membrane currents. Acute slices preserve local tissue architecture better than dissociated preparations and allow visually guided recording from defined brain regions or fluorescently labeled cells; however, whole-cell access also permits exchange between pipette solution and cytoplasm, so intracellular dialysis must be considered when interpreting signaling-dependent phenomena.

Cell-attached patch-clamp recording measures ionic current through one or more ion channels in a small membrane patch that remains attached to an intact cell; the readout is a time-resolved current trace generated when channels in the sealed patch open and close under controlled pipette voltage or stimulus conditions. Classic applications include single acetylcholine receptor currents in frog skeletal muscle, single sodium-channel currents in cultured rat muscle cells, one-channel NMDA receptor recordings, and mechanically activated PIEZO-channel recordings. The method depends on forming a high-resistance pipette-membrane seal, commonly described as a gigaohm seal, which reduces leak and noise sufficiently to resolve picoampere-scale single-channel currents. In the cell-attached configuration, the patch membrane is not ruptured, so cytosolic composition is not directly dialyzed by the pipette solution.