provided herein are apparatus and methods relating to the development of instrumentation for high throughput network electrophysiology and cellular analysis . more specifically , provided herein are multiwell microelectrode arrays and methods for the development of such an apparatus in an inexpensive fashion with a flexible , ansi / sbs - compliant format . microelectrode arrays are a grid of tightly spaced microelectrodes useful for stimulating and sensing electrically active cells , networks and tissue . the techniques described herein relate to the use of microfabrication in combination with certain large - area processes that have been employed to achieve multiwell meas in ansi / sbs - compliant culture well formats , which are also transparent for inverted / backside microscopy compatibility . these multiwell meas can be used to investigate two and three - dimensional networks of electrically active cells and tissue such as cardiac , neural , and muscular in a high throughput fashion . also being ansi / sbs - compliant , they are compatible with machinery and robotics developed for the pharmaceutical industry for drug screening applications .