Design of advanced neuroscience platform

This paper presents the design of versatile platform for advanced neuroscience on the high-level brain functions and neural prostheses. The platform enables researchers to record and stimulate brain activities of multiple free behaving animals wirelessly. The platform consists of three major functional blocks of neural interface, wireless communication system, and neural signal processing software, which of each has fundamental challenges to be overcome. Ultra wideband communication system makes it possible to transmit a large amount of data produced by high-density microelectrode wirelessly and miniaturize the entire system so that it can be implanted or carried by animals. Multiple access capability is achieved by a sophisticated communication protocol optimized for biomedical applications. Noise is one of the most important factors affecting the design of the neural interface and neural signal processing technique to reduce the noise is presented. Prototype chips were fabricated to verify the feasibility of the platform and test results are shown as well.