Advances in neural recording and stimulation devices

Electrical recording and stimulation circuits have contributed to various novel neuroscience studies and clinical applications for treating disease. Many neurological disorders have their own gradual degradation of neuronal circuitry; thus, it becomes necessary to accurately study the connections amongst neurons. Therefore, there is a demand today for generating and enhancing neuroscience tools which could allow individuals to study circuit dynamics, by recording and stimulating neurons with high spatiotemporal resolution. Existing neural technologies suffer from degraded signal quality, large size, low channel count, and they also consume enormous power. Further, associated large stimulation artifacts cause saturation, which limits the current recorders from monitoring neuron activities in a window up to a few hundred milliseconds after a stimulation onsite. This chapter describes innovative neuroengineering platform technologies and miniaturized devices that enable more precise neural stimulation, recording, and subsequent processing function. The proposed technologies feature high-precision, low-power, and low-noise elements, all in a very compact system. They also provide the ability to simultaneously record and stimulate neurons, to enable novel experimental designs that ultimately improve our understanding of the human brain’s circuits and functions.