Electrical Neural Recording System for Use in the Brain and the Peripheral Nerve

This paper presents the electrical neural recording system for monitoring neural spikes in the brain and the peripheral nerve. The implemented recording system is composed of the flexible electrode array, the recording front-end integrated circuit (IC), the ground sheet, and the flexible cable. The recording front-end IC amplifies weak neural spikes residing in about 1 kHz bandwidth. The amplified spikes are then digitized through the successive-approximation-register analog-to-digital converter (SAR ADC) with a 10-bit resolution. The system operation is first verified using the artificial neural spike generator. Then, the system is applied to the in vivo experiment using the rat. The presented electrical neural recording system successfully monitors neural spikes in the brain and the peripheral nerve while consuming only a few μW power per channel. The recording front-end IC is fabricated using the 1-poly 6-metal (1P6M) standard CMOS technology.