Photo-Oxidative Cell Membrane Perforation and Applied Cellular Level Neural Interface and Electrophysiological Recording in Animal Cells

Neural interfaces allow informed communication throughout the body. Generally, electrodes are used for recording information from the nervous system. Information in nerve cells is carried by changes in a cell’s membrane potential. The change in membrane potential ranges from approximately -70 to +30 mV. Membrane potential is measured by placing an electrode inside a cell. For detailed information exchange, it is necessary to connect individual cells and electrodes. In operation of the neural interface, cell death caused by the connection between cells and electrodes is a problem. Solving this problem will dramatically increase the performance of the neural interface. To solve the problem, not only must the electrode shape be optimized but also the technology for the connection between cells and electrodes should be optimized. We discovered a method that is less likely to induce cell death and has a high rate of successful cell membrane perforation, and applied it to microelectrodes. We made a microelectrode to which this method was applied. We used this electrode for two types of cells, PC12 and ND7/23 cells, and here we describe the data we obtained.