Miniature system for chronic neural recording in pigeons and small animals

With the extraordinary navigational ability in large-scale space, homing pigeons have been a valuable model to investigate the neurophysiological substrate of large-scale spatial cognition. Here we show a miniature chronic recording system that can be mounted on the back of freely behaving pigeons. In this paper, we mainly focus on the design and implementation of the headstage comprised of an instrument amplifier with high input impedance and stable gain, which allows multi-unit recording from a pair of electrodes implanted in the brain of pigeons. We also briefly introduce the backpack components and discuss the further optimal design of the system.