An Analog Front End for Recording Neuronal Activity in Freely Behaving Small Animals

Extracting characteristic brain signals and simultaneous recording animals behaving could help us to understand the complex behavior of neuronal ensembles. Here, a system was established to record local field potentials (LFP) and extracellular signal or multiple-unit discharge and behavior synchronously by utilizing electrophysiology and integrated circuit technique. It comprised microelectrodes and micro-driver assembly, analog front end (AFE),while a computer (Pentium III ) was used as the platform for the graphic user interface, which was developed using the LabVIEW programming language. It was designed as a part of ongoing research to develop a portable wireless neural signal recording system. We believe that this information will be useful for the research of brain-computer interface.

The environmental signal of an early Holocene pollen record from the Shiyang River basin lake sediments, NW China

Pollen analyses of 85 samples from the San-jiaocheng section well along the margin of a palaeolake at the end of the Shiyang River, NW China, show that Picea and Sabina dominate the pollen assemblage. Together they reach as high as 40%-60%, with the percentage of Picea varying inversely with that of Sabina. Similar results were obtained from another section in the Shiyang River drainage. Using modern ecological habitat relationship analogues, pol-len transport characteristics, and the overall pollen assem-blage, we propose that both Picea and Sabina pollen were transported by the river from the mountains at the upper reaches of the Shiyang River, and that the assemblage is more indicative of changes in upland vegetation than of local conditions near the section. This interpretation is supported by pollen data derived from surface samples, water samples, and riverbed samples. Using a moisture indicator (the Picea to Sabina ratio) and calculated pollen concentrations, we identify a series of

Highly Stretchable and Permeable Conductors Based on Shrinkable Electrospun Fiber Mats

Wearable on-skin electrodes or conductors should be vapor permeable,strain-insensitive,isotropically stretchable and stable under cyclic stretching.Various strategies have been proposed to prepare the required conductors up to now;however,it is a challenge to fabricate them with above properties in a simple manner.In this paper,a highly permeable and stretchable conductor based on electrospun fluorine rubber fiber mat is reported.The fibers are pre-stretched in electric field during electrospinning,and they shrink isotropically by~35-40%in area after being detached from the substrate.The obtained fiber mat conductor demonstrates high stretchability up to~170%,and the resistance changes only 0.8 under 60%strain,which is superior to many other strain-insensitive conductors.The conductor possesses high stability,no cracks or structure damage are observed after washing and cyclic stretching.Moreover,the conductor is vapor permeable with a water vapor transmission rate of~850 g m−2 day−1,which is comparable to the normal water evaporation in ambient conditions,indicating that it would not disturb the sweat evaporation when being used on skin.The conductor is successfully used as stretchable yarns and electromyography(EMG)electrodes,showing high reliability in E-textiles and on-skin applications.

Ultra-low noise measurements of nanopore-based single molecular detection

Nanopore is an ultra-sensitive electrochemical technique for single molecular detection in confined space. To suppress the noise in detection of the weak current of nanopore, we investigated the influence of membrane capacitance and applied voltage on the noise of the current signal by model analysis, simulation and experiment. The obtained results demonstrated that membrane capacitance affects the noise by amplifying the noise of the applied voltage. Therefore, suppression of applied voltage noise is an efficient approach for reducing the noise in nanopore detection. Here, we developed an ultra-low noise instrument system for detecting the single molecule signal in nanopores. As demonstrated by nanopore experiments, the p-p noise of the developed system during the recording is reduced to 3.2B pA using the filter of 5 kHz. Therefore, the developed system could be applied in highly sensitive nanopore detection.

A multi-channel analog IC for in vitro neural recording

Recent work in the field ofneurophysiology has demonstrated that, by observing the firing characteristic of action potentials （AP） and the exchange pattern of signals between neurons, it is possible to reveal the nature of ＂memory＂ and ＂thinking＂ and help humans to understand how the brain works. To address these needs, we developed a prototype fully integrated circuit （IC） with micro-electrode array （MEA） for neural recording. In this scheme, the microelectrode array is composed by 64 detection electrodes and 2 reference electrodes. The proposed IC consists of 8 recording channels with an area of 5 x 5 mm2. Each channel can operate independently to process the neural signal by amplifying, filtering, etc. The chip is fabricated in 0.5-#m CMOS technology. The simulated and measured results show the system provides an effective device for recording feeble signal such as neural signals.