A miniature implantable computer for functional electrical stimulation and recording of neuromuscular activity

We present details of an implantable computer (neurochip) that we are using for functional electrical stimulation (FES) and recording in freely behaving animals. The neurochip has on-board computational capability to discriminate spikes in real-time on two channels and deliver corresponding stimuli. We are using this neurochip for stimulus-response experiments to study neuromuscular dynamics in flying insects. These experiments explore problems in biological motor control and in autonomous computing. Methods and lessons learned from these studies have applications in neural prosthetics.