Single LFP sorting for high-resolution brain-chip interfacing

Abstract

Understanding cognition has fascinated many neuroscientists and made them put their efforts in deciphering the brain's information processing capabilities for cognition. Rodents perceive the environment through whisking during which tactile information is processed at the barrel columns of the somatosensory cortex (S1). The intra- and trans-columnar microcircuits in the barrel cortex segregate and integrate information during activation of this pathway. Local Field Potentials (LFPs) recorded from these barrel columns provide information about the microcircuits and the shape of the LFPs provide the fingerprint of the underlying neuronal network. Through a contour based sorting method, we could sort neuronal evoked LFPs recorded using high-resolution Electrolyte-Oxide- Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (EOSFET) based neuronal probes. We also report that the latencies and amplitudes of the individual LFPs' shapes vary among the different clusters generated by the method. The shape specific information of the single LFPs thus can be used in commenting on the underlying neuronal network generating those signals. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.