Browsing by Author "Yoon, Inho"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Developing an In Vivo Intracellular Neuronal Recording System for Freely Behaving Small Animals
    (2013) Yoon, Inho

    Electrophysiological intracellular recordings from freely behaving animals can provide information and insights, which have been speculated or cannot be reached by traditional recordings from confined animals. Intracellular recordings can reveal a neuron's intrinsic properties and their communication with other neurons. Utilizing this technology in an awake and socially behaving brain can bring brain research one step further.

    In this dissertation, a customized miniature electronics and microdrive assembly is introduced for intracellular recording from small behaving animals. This solution has realized in vivo intracellular recording from freely behaving zebra finches and mice. Also, a new carbon nanotube probe is presented as a surface scanning tip and a neural electrode. With the carbon nanotube probe, intracellular and extracellular neural signals were successfully recorded from mouse brains. Previously, carbon nanotubes have only been used as a coating material on a cell-culturing platform or on a metal based neural electrode. This probe is the first pure carbon nanotube neural electrode without an underlying platform or wire, and it is the first one that has achieved intracellular and extracellular recordings from vertebrate cortical neurons.

  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Intracellular Neural Recording with Pure Carbon Nanotube Probes.
    (PloS one, 2013-01) Yoon, Inho; Hamaguchi, Kosuke; Borzenets, Ivan V; Finkelstein, Gleb; Mooney, Richard; Donald, Bruce R
    The computational complexity of the brain depends in part on a neuron's capacity to integrate electrochemical information from vast numbers of synaptic inputs. The measurements of synaptic activity that are crucial for mechanistic understanding of brain function are also challenging, because they require intracellular recording methods to detect and resolve millivolt- scale synaptic potentials. Although glass electrodes are widely used for intracellular recordings, novel electrodes with superior mechanical and electrical properties are desirable, because they could extend intracellular recording methods to challenging environments, including long term recordings in freely behaving animals. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can theoretically deliver this advance, but the difficulty of assembling CNTs has limited their application to a coating layer or assembly on a planar substrate, resulting in electrodes that are more suitable for in vivo extracellular recording or extracellular recording from isolated cells. Here we show that a novel, yet remarkably simple, millimeter-long electrode with a sub-micron tip, fabricated from self-entangled pure CNTs can be used to obtain intracellular and extracellular recordings from vertebrate neurons in vitro and in vivo. This fabrication technology provides a new method for assembling intracellular electrodes from CNTs, affording a promising opportunity to harness nanotechnology for neuroscience applications.