A Miniature Neural Recording Device to Investigate Sleep and Temperature Regulation in Mice

Sleep serves an underlying function in mammals that appears to be essential for life, but despite decades of research, this function and a large part of the neuronal circuitry underlying its control, are little understood. To conduct research in this field, many devices capable of recording neural signals such as LFP and EEG have been developed. However, due to their size and weight, most of these devices are unsuitable for sleep studies in mice, the most commonly used animals. This paper presents a novel 4 channel, compact (2.1cm by 1.7cm) and lightweight (3.6g) neural-logging device that can record for 3 days on just two 0.6g zinc air 312 batteries. Instead of the typical solution of using multiple platforms, the presented device integrates high resolution EEG, EMG and temperature recordings into one platform. The onboard BLE module allows the device to be controlled wirelessly as well as stream data in real time, enabling researchers to check the progress of the recording with minimal animal disturbance. The device is able to accurately record EEG and temperature data through long 24 hour in-vivo recordings conducted. The obtained EEG data could be easily sleep scored and the temperature values were all within the expected physiological range.