Nerves cultured in artifical medium

[shivakumar06]

can nerves not be cultured in artificial medium? why?
do nervers undergo cell division?

 

[atyy]

Where did you read that?

Did you mean something other than https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/culturing-nerve-cells ?

 

[Pythagorean]

'Cultured neural networks' even has its own wiki, it's fairly typical. They can demonstrate learning/memory:

Baruchi I, Ben-Jacob E (2007). "Towards Neuro-Memory Chip: Imprinting Multiple Memories in Cultured Neural Networks". Physical Review E 75.

and of course, there's the cultured rat neurons controlling the robot:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/biomedical/bionics/rat-brain-robot-grows-up

As to whether neurons divide, There's "younger" cells (neural stem cells) waiting to differentiate in the brain that can turn into either glia or neurons and once you've differentiated into a neuron you can't divide (but I thought I heard something about them being able to go back to their earlier state... not sure whether it was in nature or lab only).

Or maybe it was this:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120130171907.htm