Wireless Biosignal Recording and Stimulation System

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This award supports development of a device that will enable study of the neuronal activity of freely moving, behaving, and socializing rodents or other small animals in natural environments. To date, attempts to develop custom hardware devices for wireless neural sensing have led to systems with varied advantages and drawbacks as the result of trade-offs between power consumption, noise and cost. The use of commercial off the shelf technology requires a much smaller and faster development effort than required for custom efforts, while simultaneously providing state-of-the-art data-processing, networking, and communication technology. But such systems are typically bulky and power intensive. This effort supported by this award represents a compromise between the use of custom designed sub-systems and the use of off-the-shelf components. The PI expects to achieve a balance between low-noise and low-power signal transmission, data communication, and networking performance, while providing unprecedented local digital signal processing and bi-directional communications capabilities. Specifically, the objective is the development of a wireless neural sensing, stimulation, and communication platform capable of 1) transmitting multiple channels of neural signals from, and 2) applying pre-defined or feedback stimuli to any number of freely behaving and interacting rodents in their natural environment. Efforts will be focused on 1) completing a comprehensive web-based two-channel wireless EEG recording system, 2) enabling programmed event-based remote stimulation, and 3) implementing ultra low-power multi-channel single-unit recording capabilities for chronic experiments. The proposed wireless neural recording and stimulation system will serve as a foundation for novel, comprehensive, and minimally invasive devices permitting study of brain function in an unprecedented manner. The approach used in this research proposal could potentially serve as a model for future research endeavors in that it initially leverages a new and revolutionary technology for near-term goals, and proceeds to enhance this underlying technology to meet longer-term goals. Students at all postsecondary levels will be involved in the project, through both hands-on research training and participation in a class dealing with micro electro-mechanical systems.