used in neurobiological applications consists of axon isolation microgrooves that are connected to two or more larger reservoirs that house the cell populations either directly (Figure 1B) [16] or through larger microfluidic channels [5]. The dimensions of the microgrooves need to be chosen so that they are large enough for the axons to enter, but too small for the cell somas to fit in. Typically dimensions in the range of 2 – 10 μm are used for this purpose. The length of the microgrooves can be used to control whether or not dendrites are also able to traverse between compartments. Compared to axons that can grow many millimeters (and more), dendrites typically penetrate only 100 – 300 μm into the microgrooves [5,16,17].
