Recording from the Aplysia Abdominal Ganglion with a Planar Microelectrode Array

A passive multimicroelectrode array has been fabricated and used to record neural events from the abdominal ganglion of the marine mollusk, Aplysia californica. The array consists of a pattern of gold conductor lines on a glass substrate which is insulated with a polyimide. The 32 electrodes are 25, in diameter and are arranged in a 4 x 8 matrix on 200 um centers. The array is durable and reusable, and can be safely autoclaved. The recording environment surrounding each electrode is sufficiently uniform so as to permit spatial localization of identified cells in the ganglion. The array can record large numbers of unique and often interrelated extracellular neural potentials in relatively simple experiments.