Extracellular single neuron stimulation with high-density multi-electrode array

Recent advances in fabrication and processing techniques have made it possible to develop Multi-Electrode Arrays (MEA) with a very high density (HD). Such systems can not only be used for HD in-vivo recording, but also for actively stimulating neural tissue with high precision. Recent studies have shown how HD MEA can identify the neuron soma position and reconstruct the axonal arbor. With the position of the soma and axon hillock of the neurons in proximity of the HD MEA known, we propose a method based on a genetic algorithm to shape the electric potential in the surrounding tissue to selectively activate individual neurons while avoiding to stimulate all others. For a number of realistic neuronal distributions around the MEA we have performed a Monte Carlo simulation that shows 99.5% specificity (SP) for the genetic approach, and compared the result with straight-forward monopolar nearest electrode stimulation (SP = 80.53%) and bipolar stimulation of the two nearest electrodes to the axon hillock along the axonal direction (SP = 74.10%).