A Motorized Microdrive for Recording of Neural Ensembles in Awake Behaving Rats

Abstract

The recording of neural ensembles in awake, behaving rats has been an extremely successful experimental paradigm, providing demonstrable scientific advances. Dynamic control of the position of the implanted electrodes is of key importance as mobile electrodes provide a better signal-to-noise ratio and a better cell/ electrode yield than nonmobile electrodes. Here we describe the use of low cost, soon to be commercially available dc motors to successfully control the depth of electrodes. The prototype designed is approximately 30 mm in diameter and 50 mm in length and weighed about 30 gms. This paper presents the results of linear displacements of electrodes achievable with this motorized microdrive.

Feedback controlled piezo-motor microdrive for accurate electrode positioning in chronic single unit recording in behaving mice

“…The weight of the piezo-motor in the proposed microdrive is only 55 mg, and the cost is about 1/30 of the cost of a conventional micromotor (Fee and Leonardo, 2001;Venkateswaran et al, 2005;Gray et al, 2007;Yamamoto and Wilson, 2008). In addition, the device is small enough to be chronically implanted on small animals, such as mice, and recycling the device for additional use requires very little time or effort.…”

“…In an effort to accommodate the demand for electrophysiology in behaving animals and to overcome the limitations of conventional, manual microdrives, several automatic microdrives have been developed using micromotors, piezoelectric, or hydraulic actuators (Fee and Leonardo, 2001;Cham et al, 2005;Venkateswaran et al, 2005;Gray et al, 2007;Sato et al, 2007;Park et al, 2008;Yamamoto and Wilson, 2008). Nonetheless, recording neural signals from freely behaving mice remains a particular challenge due to the small size of the mice and the relatively large size, bulky weight, high cost, high input power requirements, and operational complexity of the currently available recording devices (Korchunov, 1995;Cham et al, 2005;Sato et al, 2007;Park et al, 2008;Yang et al, 2008).…”

Implementation of a galvanically isolated low-noise power supply board for multi-channel headstage preamplifiers

“…Despite the significant methodological progress in multi-channel recording technique in the last decade, the effective application of the technique still represents a great challenge for system neuroscientist (Buzsaki, 2004;Foster and Wilson, 2006;Hafting et al, 2005;Harris et al, 2002;Leutgeb et al, 2005;Sargolini et al, 2006). In the last couple of years, several simple and practical solutions (Cham et al, 2005;Gray et al, 2007;Jeantet and Cho, 2003;Jurgens and Hage, 2006;Keating and Gerstein, 2002;Korshunov, 2006;Korshunov and Averkin, 2007;Lansink et al, 2007;Musial et al, 2002;Swadlow et al, 2005;Szabo et al, 2001aSzabo et al, ,b, 2002Venkatachalam et al, 1999;Venkateswaran et al, 2005), as well as free software (Hazan et al, 2006) have been described to ease the technical challenge. These can reduce the significant investment typically required by the laboratories to introduce the multi-channel recording technique.…”

Implementation of a miniature sized, battery powered electrophysiological signal-generator for testing multi-channel recording equipments

“…Despite the significant methodological progress in these techniques in the last decades, measuring neuronal activity in relation to behavior in freely moving animals, still represents a challenge for system neuroscientist (Bures et al, 1997;Buzsaki, 2004;Csicsvari et al, 2003;Czurko et al, 1999;Foster and Wilson, 2006;Hafting et al, 2005;Harris et al, 2002;Hirase et al, 2001;Leutgeb et al, 2005;Lin et al, 2005;Martin-Cora et al, 2005;O'Neill et al, 2006;Sargolini et al, 2006). Several simple and practical solutions Musial et al, 2002;Szabo et al, 2001aSzabo et al, ,b, 2002Toth et al, 2007;Venkatachalam et al, 1999;Venkateswaran et al, 2005), as well as free software tools (Hazan et al, 2006) have been described to ease this technical challenge. These can also reduce the significant investments typically required by laboratories to introduce the multi-channel recording technique.…”