Brain technology: Neurons recorded en masse.

Abstract

A silicon probe that is inserted into the mouse brain can precisely measure the activity of about 200 individual neurons simultaneously. This tool should improve our ability to study functional neuronal circuitry. See Letter p.232 Sensory, motor and cognitive operations involve the coordinated action of large neuronal populations across multiple brain regions. Existing technologies reliably measure activity from a relatively small number of neurons with high spatial and temporal resolution, or from a large volume of neurons with low resolution. Timothy Harris and colleagues describe the design, fabrication and performance of Neuropixels, a silicon probe that can measure well-isolated neural activity from hundreds of neurons. They integrated these probes into a lightweight system that could record activity simultaneously and with high fidelity from hundreds of neurons in awake and freely moving rodents.