Abstract
Electrophysiological methods are the gold standard in neuroscience because they reveal the activity of individual neurons at high temporal resolution and in arbitrary brain locations. Microelectrode arrays based on complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, such as Neuropixels probes, look set to transform these methods. Neuropixels probes provide ∼1000 recording sites on an extremely narrow shank, with on-board amplification, digitization, and multiplexing. They deliver low-noise recordings from hundreds of neurons, providing a step change in the type of data available to neuroscientists. Here we discuss the opportunities afforded by these probes for large-scale electrophysiology, the challenges associated with data processing and anatomical localization, and avenues for further improvements of the technology.
Highlights
Where different models of probe are available, the following were used: Neurotech Alliance, G1-P07; Cambridge Neurotech, H3; Neuronexus, Buzsaki256
A Neuropixels probe can simultaneously record from all layers of neocortex and hippocampus, from all layers of superior colliculus along with periaqueductal gray, or from a set of adjacent functionally related areas such as cingulate, prelimbic, and infralimbic cortex
Neuropixels penetrations through the brain. (a) Example recording vectors that can be achieved with single Neuropixels probes
Summary
Where different models of probe are available, the following were used: Neurotech Alliance, G1-P07; Cambridge Neurotech, H3; Neuronexus, Buzsaki256. In the future, imaging of membrane-localized voltage sensors [51] or methods to elicit single spikes from individual neurons [52] may provide new ways to collect ground truth with higher throughput Given this context, careful manual curation of the results of spike sorting algorithms is still critical, and public, open-source software packages have been developed to improve the efficiency of this process [53]. Though these probes exhibit problematic noise levels and light sensitivity, future developments may make this approach workable Another inventive use of CMOS technology is the repurposing of large arrays of tiny amplifiers, such as the pixels on a CMOS camera sensor, to work as recording channels for neural signals by coupling them with large bundles of microwires, enabling massive scaling of the number of microwires that could be simultaneously recorded [70].
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