A scalable system for high-throughput and longitudinal electrophysiology in rodent brain research

Psychiatric disorders give rise to aberrant patterns of activity within the complex neural circuits of our brains. Yet, the exact nature of these abnormal patterns is often unknown to developers of new treatments. The goal of this project is to enable circuit-oriented research of neuropsychiatric diseases using rodent disease models. The long-term objective is to catalyze the discovery of new therapeutic targets for a variety of disorders and to provide a tool to study animal-to-animal variability in neural coding. A new type of research tool will be developed and commercialized that is specialized for high-throughput, detailed, and long-term neural measurements in behaving mice. We will develop of a data logging system that is lightweight enough for a freely-moving mouse to carry as well as flexible electrode technology that is minimally invasive to brain tissue. By enabling high-throughput and long-term recordings, this tool provides a practical way to study the progression of circuit dysfunction using large cohorts of animal disease models.