This limitation has been recently addressed by the development of co-culture systems and the production of organoids (Quadrato et al., 2016). Co-culture of neurons on rat astrocytes resulted in synchronized network activity within three months of plating, as measured with MEAs (Odawara et al., 2014). Furthermore, co-cultures of human primary astrocytes and a mixed excitatory-inhibitory population of hiPSC-derived cortical neurons can lead to network synchronization and connectivity in three to four weeks (Kuijlaars et al., 2016). Considering distinct electrical activity in EEG and fMRI are associated with alcoholism (Huang et al., 2018; Klimesch et al., 2001; Pandey et al., 2012), this is an important development for modeling predisposition.
