Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
established spike-sorting techniques. If all the threshold conditions are met, a counter is incremented.
Each probe can have as many as three rate counters corresponding to three neurons per electrode.
Every 100 msec, the bin counts are sent to the wireless transceiver for processing on a PC.
On the receiving side of the RF link, data are collected via a Nordic nRF2401 transceiver on
the Pico Receiver. The RF link is controlled by another MSP430F1611 microcontroller and results
are passed on to a PC via a USB bridge (CP2103 from Silicon Laboratory). The USB bridge is
compliant with the USB 2.0 specification and has a maximum throughput of 12 Mbits/sec.
The Pico Remote is configured with software running on Windows-based PCs. The testing
software has three separate applications: Spike Capture, Spike Detection Parameter Initialization,
and Binned Spike Data (firing rate) Display. The Spike Capture application is a Matlab graphical
user interface that captures and displays raw sample data sent from the Pico Remote. This ap-
plication does not configure the Pico Remote but is used solely for viewing and storing a single
channel's raw sample data for analysis. The Spike Detection Parameter Initialization application is
in development and will accommodate configuring three counters for each probe. Figure
7.9
shows
screenshots of the user interface.
FIgURE 7.9:
Spike detection parameter initialization application.
