Low-cost and versatile electrodes for extracellular chronic recordings in rodents

Arthur S.C França,Josephus A Van Hulten,Michael X Cohen

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04867

Arthur S.C França, Josephus A Van Hulten + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04867

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Abstract

Electrophysiological data are used to investigate fundamental properties of brain function, its relation to cognition, and its dysfunction in diseases. The development of reliable and open-source systems for electrophysiological data acquisition is decreasing the total cost of constructing and operating an electrophysiology laboratory, and facilitates low-cost methods to extract and analyze the data (Siegle et al., 2017). Here we detail our method of building custom-designed low-cost electrodes. These electrodes can be customized and manufactured by any researcher to address a broad set of research questions, further decreasing the final cost of an implanted animal. Finally, we present data showing such an electrode has a good signal quality to record LFP.

Highlights

The extraction of extracellular voltage fluctuations, from spiking activity to neuronal oscillations, is one of the most widely used techniques in neuroscience (Siegle et al, 2017)
All experiments were approved by the Centrale Commissie Dierproeven (CCD) and it is according to all indications of animal welfare body [Approval number 2016-0079]
To evaluate the quality of the signal that can be extracted with this type of electrode arrays, we recorded spontaneous Local Field Potential (LFP) and spiking activity from an animal in their homecage in two different moments, day1 (First Day of recording after post-surgery recovery time) and 90 days after the first recording session to show that the implant sustains high signal quality for long periods of chronic recordings

Summary

Introduction

The extraction of extracellular voltage fluctuations, from spiking activity to neuronal oscillations, is one of the most widely used techniques in neuroscience (Siegle et al, 2017). Two classical ways to approach this are (1) “hyperdrives” - carrier structures that enable the movement of individual electrodes or bundles of electrodes such as tetrodes (Battaglia et al, 2009; Bragin et al, 2000; Brunetti et al, 2014; Kloosterman et al, 2009; Liang et al, 2017; McNaughton, 1999; Michon et al, 2016), and (2) silicon probes (Bragin et al, 2000; Jun et al, 2017; Lopes-dos- Santos et al, 2018; Ulyanova et al, 2019) Both approaches have several advantages including high-density recordings or layer-specific profiles. Electrodes on or under the skull have additional limitations of the impossibility of extracting data from deep anatomical regions or local activity

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