Development of a Small High Bandwidth Telemetry System for Neurophysiology

描述（由申请人提供）：在听觉神经生理学领域中，目前需要一种小型高带宽遥测系统，该系统将能够记录响应于自然声刺激的不受限制的动物中的许多神经活动通道。这样一个系统将提供一个强大的工具，将被用来跟踪神经通路，处理特定物种的发声。发射器将提供多达64个神经通道，每个通道将以50 KHz采样，尺寸为1 cm 3。它将被设计为允许多达八个同时的系统，这将允许研究人员研究一个社会群体或群体内的动物之间的相互作用，声音交流和交流。发射机将被设计为提供一个接口，以记录来自几个小型安装麦克风的声学信号。同时记录声学和神经通道将允许这些信号相关。虽然该系统将针对绒猴的听觉神经生理学，但它将足够通用，可用于许多神经行为学应用。 具体目标1：开发一个5.8 GHz的发射机，尺寸为1平方厘米，功耗仅为90 mW。发射机将被设计为允许多达8个系统同时占用5.8 GHz ISM频段。 具体目标2：开发一种适用于64通道的放大器和多路复用器前端，可安装在多个1 cm 2的电路板上。这将通过板上芯片方法来实现。这将使5.8 GHz发射机和模拟前端的大小为1 cm 3。 具体目标3：为遥测系统开发灵活的在线数据分析和以太网后端，以便在收集数据时实时执行尖峰排序和/或反向相关等功能。 健康相关性：人们认为，研究交流声音的神经行为学方面将有助于最了解语音是如何被人类处理。研究发声活跃的灵长类动物如何从其他声音中识别和提取行为相关的发声，将提供一个模型，该模型将允许开发可以从其他非语音声音中提取语音信号的信号处理算法。这将对改善工程应用产生直接影响，例如强大的语音识别系统和助听器。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There is a current need in the field of auditory neurophysiology for a small high bandwidth telemetry system that will enable the recording of many channels of neural activity in unrestrained animals in response to natural acoustic stimuli. Such a system will provide a powerful tool that will be used to trace neural pathways that process species-specific vocalizations. The transmitter will provide up to 64 neural channels where each channel will be sampled at 50 KHz and will be 1 cm3 in size. It will be designed to allow up to eight simultaneous systems, which will permit researchers to study interactions, vocal exchanges, and communications between and among animals within a social group or colony. The transmitter will be designed to provide an interface to record acoustic signals from several small mounted microphones. Recording both acoustic and neural channels simultaneously will allow these signals to be correlated. Although the system will be targeted at auditory neurophysiology in marmosets, it will be general enough to be used in many neuroethology applications. Specific Aim 1: To develop a 5.8 GHz transmitter that is 1 cm2 in size and that consumes only 90mW of power. The transmitter will be designed to allow up to eight systems to occupy the 5.8 GHz ISM band simultaneously. Specific Aim 2: To develop an amplifier and multiplexer front end for 64 channels that will fit on several boards of size 1 cm2. This will be accomplished by a chip-on-board approach. This will allow the 5.8 GHz transmitter and analog front end to be 1 cm3 in size. Specific Aim 3: To develop a flexible on-line data analysis and Ethernet backend to the telemetry system so that functions such as spike sorting and/or reverse correlation can be performed in real-time as data is collected. Health Relevance: It is believed that studying the neuroethological aspects of communication sounds will contribute most to the understanding of how speech sounds are processed by humans. Studying how a vocally active primate can identify and extract behaviorally relevant vocalizations from other sounds will provide a model that will allow the development of signal processing algorithms that can extract speech signals from other non-speech sounds. This will have a direct impact on improving engineering applications such as robust speech recognition systems and hearing aids.