Temporal and spatial analysis of astrocyte calcium waves

In the last decade new ideas were born about the temporal and spatial dynamics of intercellular calcium waves in astrocytes. In this paper we introduce a new approach to analyze the ways in which astrocytes communicate in cultures. We present a method to describe the spatial propagation of Ca(2+) waves in vitro and a technique to compare the activity of different cells in vivo and in vitro under different stimulation conditions. The proposed method resulted to be an interesting way to distinguish different astrocyte clusters, which can be related to the communication characteristics in the network.