Building an Open Source electrophysiology rig: Intan-gible no more, Part 1

A traditional electrophysiology rig for neural recordings, complete with proprietary software and A/D/D/A components for recording and stimulus presentation, will run you about 35-100 thousand dollars. The real kicker is that upgrading proprietary systems to include more channels costs 10's of thousands.

Traditional ephys rig of the 2000's

Perhaps it's the Open Source mentality of Gen X's and Y's,  because Scientists don't like "black boxes,"  or simply that Academics are strapped for cash, but the Intan board is quickly becoming the favored alternative.

Intan board

A full set-up, including the main interface and amplifier boards, costs about 4-6K depending on how many recording channels you need; it covers 16 to 128. It also comes with free software, which saves files in formats that can be easily opened in MATLAB or Python. They provide a limited-time free license for a custom software for MATLAB and LabView Library, if you're so inclined.  A more popular alternative to using their licensed software, is to use Open-ephys

For data acquisition, the board and free software really raises the standard of what it means to be "plug-n-play."

With an electrode (we use Neuronexus standard 16-channel shanks), amplifier, and adapter boards, you can be collecting data within a day.

Of course, simply collecting data is never enough. Like many other scientists studying sensory or motor systems, you need to synchronize your recordings with one or many stimuli. That is where the fun begins. In Part 2, I will update ya'll on my procedure for generating auditory stimuli to present as trial blocks and synchronizing those stimuli with neural recordings.