Dementia and brain research could be improved thanks to new sensor

This is pretty exciting!

Here we tested TaiNi, a novel ultra-lightweight (<2 g) low power wireless system allowing 72-hours of recording from 16 channels sampled at ~19.5 KHz (9.7 KHz bandwidth). We captured local field potentials and action-potentials while mice engaged in unrestricted behaviour in a variety of environments and while performing tasks.

I'm used to dealing with sampling rates above 40 kHz, so the temporal resolution has a way to go, but it looks like the recorder is fairly flexible about what kind of electrode arrays it can use, which is a real positive:

Mice were implanted with either a single shank 16 channel probe attached to a microdrive (Cambridge Neurotech, GB) targeting the CA1 region of the hippocampus (n = 14 mice; AP: +1.7 mm, ML: −0.3 mm relative to Bregma), or a static dual shank silicon probe (n = 2 mice; 8 sites per shank (Neuronexus, USA)) targeting the medial prefrontal cortex (AP: +1.7 mm, ML: −0.3 mm relative to Bregma & DV: −2.0 mm from brain surface) & dorsal hippocampus (AP: −1.9 mm, ML: −2.0 mm relative to Bregma & DV: −2.0 mm from brain surface).

+5 cool kid points for using Klusta-based spike sorting -- though because this group is at ICL that's not too surprising.

This seems to be a pretty significant step in miniaturization. It seems noteworthy that the animals perform more trials of the task with this implant as compared to an older, larger implant. However, the article is misleading: this device does not record EEG signals, which are recorded from the surface of the scalp and comprise the aggregate activity of millions of neurons across multiple cubic millimeters of cortex. It records LFPs (local field potentials), which are the aggregate activity of thousands to tens of thousands of neurons in a hundreds of µm to single mm volume around the electrode, and single neuron activity. EEGs are also recorded non-invasively, which could lead one to think that this implant isn't invasive.