Sensor arrays in the micro-environment of the brain

Technology for recording action potentials from the nervous system has changed in recent years from single or at most two or three neurons to tens of neurons recorded from geometrically precise arrays of recording sites. To fully exploit these research opportunities, signal delivery and processing are key factors. We desire not only to sort the array input into neural channels but to locate neurons with respect to the array so they can be later identified in histology and serve to further decode the activity of each neuron. The distribution of a neuron´s signal across the sensor array is predictive of the cell location at least in projection onto the array but also in the dimension above the array. To achieve 3-dimensional locating power, careful estimation of signal strength at each site must be achieved taking into account the distance and the field distortion for all anticipated source positions. Achieving this independent of source strength appears to be feasible