Microelectrode Array Recording of Sinoatrial Node Firing Rate to Identify Intrinsic Cardiac Pacemaking Defects in Mice

Measuring intrinsic heart rate is an important indicator of cardiac health. This technique accurately measures this rate while excluding the majority of confounding influences on the sinoatrial node. MEA recording of intrinsic heart rate captures accurate firing rate data similar to single-cell recordings without extensive electrophysiology training.

Individuals using this technique may struggle to obtain healthy tissue preparations in early experiments, so practice the dissection and optimize the buffers and data collection settings before beginning the real data collection. Demonstrating the procedure will be Doctors Man Si and Praveen Kumar, post-doctoral researchers in my laboratory. Begin by holding the skin of the euthanized mouse with a hemostat and use surgical scissors to make a transverse incision in the skin just beneath the bottom of the ribcage from the left costal arch to the right costal arch.