High channel count electrophysiology, hardware data analysis and scaling: Can we record from the “whole brain”? - Timothy Harris

Timothy Harris, PhD

Janelia Senior Fellow,
Janelia Research Campus - HHMI

Host: Nick Melosh

Abstract 

Recent technologies have increased routine extracellular recording capacity from dozens to thousands of neurons. A next generation of hardware projects 10’s to 100’s of thousand neurons. I will review our work to develop high channel count devices, Neuropixels, and the prospects for another 10-50X capacity increase. This data volume has created bottlenecks for analysis, frequently aspiring to produce single neuron activity records, called spike sorting. I will compare different algorithms, show their frequent alarmingly divergent results, and discuss what fraction of this new data volume seems reliable. Finally, I will open a discussion of limits, how much is enough?

Curriculum vitae

Harris Lab

Related paper

[1] JJ Jun et al. Fully integrated silicon probes for high-density recording of neural activity. Nature 551 232-236 2017 DOI: 10.1038/nature24636

[2] David Kleinfeld et al. Can One Concurrently Record Electrical Spikes from Every Neuron in a Mammalian Brain? Neuron 103, 1–11, September 25, 2019 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.08.011