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Authors & Affiliations
Virgil Christian Castillo, Ryoma Okada, Kuang Chih Tso, Yoshinori Sunaga, Yasumi Ohta, Hironari Takehara, Hiroyuki Tashiro, Kiyotaka Sasagawa, Jun Ohta
Abstract
Simultaneous recording of extracellular electrophysiological and calcium imaging signals enables a more comprehensive understanding of neural activity. Thus, we aimed to incorporate extracellular recording to our calcium imaging devices. The electrophysio-imaging device consists of a 450 x 1660 µm CMOS chip and micro-LED mounted on a flexible printed circuit substrate. The imaging device had a field of view of 900 x 300 µm composed of 120 x 90 pixels recording at 10 frames per second. An absorption filter was fixed on the imaging surface to block excitation light from the LED and allow only emission light to reach the sensor. Lastly, the device was coated by parylene-C to render it waterproof. The device is ultrasmall at only 0.7 mm wide and 0.2 mm thick to reduce implantation invasiveness and tissue damage, and lightweight at only 0.02 g to prevent movement hindrance and facilitate natural behavior when doing freely moving experiments. To fabricate carbon electrodes for electrophysiological recording, a 100-µm square of the parylene-C coating was carbonized by laser. We characterized the laser-carbonized electrodes by X-ray photoelectron, Raman and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Freely-moving mice experiments were then conducted with the electrophysio-imaging device. Wedetected increased activity in the CA1 of the hippocampus following electrical stimulation of the CA3 which validates device function.