The Spike app: A programable neuron to stimulate brain slices in electrophysiology

Methods to stimulate living neurons in electrophysiological experiments involve the use of nerve stimulators that output deterministic patterns fixed at a certain frequency. Thus, they are unable to generate realistic sequences of action potentials to stimulate living neurons. By emulating firing patterns of excitable cells we are able to give electrical stimulation to the cells with more biological relevance during electrophysiological experiments. Two methods are proposed in this thesis. The first one is the spike generator system, which is based on the Leaky-Integrate and-Fire (LIF) neuron model used to stimulate brain slices in electrophysiological trials. The second is an analog electronic neuron, based on the same neuronal model. It aims to demonstrate the concept employed in software but in hardware and facilitated comparisons between the two methods. According to the experimental results cell activation is observed and shows more physiological response to the stimulation provided by the spike generator than the deterministic stimuli of a typical nerve stimulator. For that reason, the spike generator system can be used as a pulse generator in electrophysiology for brain slices.

Subject

nueral emulator
Integrate-and-Fire
electrical stimulation
analog neuron

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http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:5db873a4-32f5-4185-8803-d7193c09338e

Embargo date

2013-12-09

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Student theses

Document type

master thesis

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Thesis_Horacia_Jimenez.pdf

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