Hybrid Drive

The Hybrid Drive is a chronic implant device combining tetrode arrays with silicon probes. The drive combines up to 14 tetrodes and 2 silicon probes for layer-resolved ensemble physiology in freely moving mice 🐭

The Hybrid Drive design is based on the flexDrive, which should further facilitate its adoption.

Scientific approach and challenges

Many brain areas, including the cortex and the hippocampus, are organized in local circuits and laminar structures with information processing within and across layers. Simultaneously measuring neural activity across these two dimensions, while an animal is freely interacting with its environment, remains a key challenge in modern neuroscience.

We aimed to tackle this challenge developing the Hybrid Drive. We believe our micro-drive can enable novel insights on the relation between layer-specific and across-layer neural activity during naturalistic behavior.

Our device combines the best aspects of tetrodes and silicon probes. Tetrodes and silicon probes can be part of the same array or be divided into different arrays, simultaneously entering the brain at different angles - fitting the unique geometry of individual brain areas or the combinations of multiple areas. Our design allows to measure the LFP with a separate set of recording sites than those used to record single unit activity, even within the same area. This crucially avoids any spillovers of spiking activity into the LFP, a critical problem when using analytical approaches that explore LFP-single spike interactions.

In this repository you can find:

• Parts list: a list of parts needed to build the drive. Including flexDrive repositories for the drive body and the screw-spring mechanism.

• Building instructions: a detailed step-by-step guide on how to build the Hybrid Drive.

• Implant procedure: a quick guide of tips and tricks on how to implant the Hybrid Drive.

• Array designs: a series of tested implant designs (constantly updated).

If you're using the Hybrid Drive in your work, please cite:

Guardamagna, M., Eichler, R., Pedrosa, R., Aarts, A., Meyer, A. and Battaglia, F., 2022. The Hybrid Drive: a chronic implant device combining tetrode arrays with silicon probes for layer-resolved ensemble electrophysiology in freely moving mice. Journal of Neural Engineering (in press), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-2552/ac6771.

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