Band-Tunable and Multiplexed Integrated Circuits for Simultaneous Recording and Stimulation With Microelectrode Arrays

Two thin-film microelectrode arrays with integrated circuitry have been developed for extracellular neural recording in behaving animals. An eight-site probe for simultaneous neural recording and stimulation has been designed that includes on-chip amplifiers that can be individually bypassed, allowing direct access to the iridium sites for electrical stimulation. The on-probe amplifiers have a gain of 38.9 dB, an upper-cutoff frequency of 9.9 kHz, and an input-referred noise of 9.2 microV rms integrated from 100 Hz to 10 kHz. The low-frequency cutoff of the amplifier is tunable to allow the recording of field potentials and minimize stimulus artifact. The amplifier consumes 68 microW from +/- 1.5 V supplies and occupies 0.177 mm2 in 3 microm features. In vivo recordings have shown that the preamplifiers can record single-unit activity 1 ms after the onset of stimulation on sites as close as 20 microm to the stimulating electrode. A second neural recording array has been developed which multiplexes 32 neural signals onto four output data leads. Providing gain on this array eliminates the need for bulky headmounted circuitry and reduces motion artifacts. The time-division multiplexing circuitry has crosstalk between consecutive channels of less than 6% at a sample rate of 20 kHz per channel. Amplified, time-division-multiplexed multichannel neural recording allows the large-scale recording of neuronal activity in freely behaving small animals with minimum number of interconnect leads.