Neuroscientists who want to follow the nervous system’s cellular conversations will soon have access to easy-to-use technology that simultaneously monitors neural activity at hundreds of different sites within the brain, thanks to a major engineering effort funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, and Wellcome.

The new probes are expected to give scientists a much clearer picture of how different parts of the brain work together to process information.

The devices, called Neuropixels probes, place hundreds of recording electrodes across a large span of a rodent’s brain, so that researchers can collect more meaningful data in a single experiment than other technologies currently allow. Neuropixels probes are expected to be available for purchase by research laboratories by mid-2018.

The new probes were described in an article titled, “Fully integrated silicon probes for high-density recording of neural activity,” published in the November 9, 2017 issue of the journal Nature.

Some highlights from data presented:

• This is the first report of a large (10 mm), dense (100 sites/mm) implantable neural recording device
• With each probe, scientists see hundreds of well resolved single neuron signal traces
• The probes can record simultaneously across multiple brain regions
• Researchers have recorded from more than 700 neurons using two Neuropixels probes
• Probes yielded high neuron count and excellent signal-to-noise performance with no special techniques required

With nearly 1,000 electrical sensors positioned along a probe thinner than a human hair but long enough to access many regions of a rodent’s brain simultaneously, the new technology could greatly accelerate neuroscience research, said Timothy Harris, senior fellow at Janelia, leader of the Neuropixels collaboration. “You can detect the activity of large numbers of neurons from multiple brain regions with higher fidelity and much less difficulty,” he said.

Scientists from the consortium presented data collected using prototype Neuropixels probes at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Their results demonstrate that the probes, together with new methods of data analysis, can be used to track the activity of hundreds or even thousands of individual cells in disparate brain regions. There are currently more than 400 prototype Neuropixels probes in testing at research centers worldwide, including 20 labs affiliated with Gatsby and Wellcome such as the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, eight HHMI labs and are being used at large scale by researchers at the Allen Institute.

Vincent Bonin, Group Leader at NERF (empowered by IMEC, KU Leuven and VIB): ?“Neuropixels probes substantially lower the barrier to large-scale electrophysiology by providing hundreds of high quality recordings at a fraction of the cost,” said Vincent Bonin at Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders who is co-author of the study and whose lab tested early prototypes of the probes. “Together with emerging software tools, the new probes will dramatically expand user base and the range of applications of the technologies in the laboratory and, hopefully, in industry.”