Extracellular Electrophysiology Acquisition

Introduction

This course is designed to provide a thorough understanding of extracellular electrophysiology, a branch for studying the electrical activity of neurons and other excitable cells. It includes recorded lectures with hands-on electronics exercises to ensure that you gain both theoretical knowledge and practical skills.

Note

We want to thank Open Ephys team for creating this course. Their hard work and expertise in developing and sharing this material are greatly appreciated. You can find the original course at OE Ephys Course.

Materials for students

The course consists of 2 segments - Theory and experiments. Read the theory segments carefully before performing the experiments to get a better understanding of all the concepts.

To read before Day 1:

• How to use a breadboard

Day 1: Detecting Signals

• Theory Day 1
  • Introduction
  • Talk: Introduction
  • Types of extracellular electrophysiology
  • Electronics Refresher
  • Equivalent circuits in the brain
  • What does an acquisition system do?
  • The electrode detects changes in electric potential
  • References

Day 2: Protecting and Amplifying Signals

• Theory Day 2
  • Impedance ratios determine signal transmission
  • Amplifiers

Day 3: Referencing and Grounding

• Theory Day 3
  • Differential amplifiers remove common noise
  • Instrumentation amplifiers
  • Why do we need a ground electrode?
  • Low and High pass filtering

Day 4: Synchronization and Digitization

• Theory Day 4
  • Digitization
  • Talk: Acquisition and Synchronization

No Hardware kit? Use these links!

• Exercises Day 1: No Hardware

• Exercises Day 2: No Hardware

Note

On completion, you’ll be able to understand:

1. The basic principles of extracellular electrophysiology.

2. Design and build basic electronic circuits for signal acquisition and processing.

3. Perform extracellular recordings and analyze electrophysiological data.

4. Design and troubleshoot electrophysiology experiments effectively.