Neuroscientists Join the Open-Source Hardware Movement

Two MIT grad students offer up DIY brain-recording gear

By Eliza StricklandPosted 11 Jun 2014 | 15:00 GMT

Photo: Open Ephys

Graduate students Josh Siegle and Jakob Voigtswere planning an ambitious series of experimentsat their MIT neuroscience labs in 2011 when theyran into a problem. They needed to recordcomplex brain signals from mice, but they couldn’tafford the right equipment: The recording systemscost upward of US $60,000 each, and they wantedat least four. So they decided to solve theirdilemma by building their own gear on the cheap.And knowing that they wouldn’t be the lastneuroscientists to encounter such a problem, theydecided to give away their designs. Now theirproject, , isthe hub of a nascent open-source hardwarecommunity for neural technology.

Open Ephys (http://open-ephys.org/)

Siegle and Voigts weren’t knowledgeable abouteither circuit design or coding, but they learned asthey went along. By July 2013, they were ready tomanufacture 50 of their recording systems, whichthey gave to collaborators for beta testing. Thisspring they manufactured 100 improved units,which are now arriving in neuroscience labsaround the world. They estimate that each systemcosts about $3,000 to produce.

Neuroscience has a history of hackers, Siegle says,with researchers cobbling together their own gear or customizing commercial systems to meet theirparticular needs. But those new tools rarely leave the labs they are built in. So scientists spend a lot of timereinventing the wheel. The goal of Open Ephys (which is short for open-source electrophysiology) is not justto distribute the tools that Siegle and Voigts have come up with so far but to encourage researchers to putresources into developing open-source tools for the benefit of the whole community. “In addition tochanging the tools, we also want to change the culture,” Siegle says.

The flagship tool that Siegle and Voigts developed is an , which makes sense of the electric signals from electrodes implanted in an

animal’s brain. The board interfaces with up to eight headstages that amplify, filter, multiplex, and digitizesignals from the brain, and then sends those signals to a computer for further processing. Commercialsystems typically have individual ICs perform each of those four functions, but Siegle and Voigts’s system

acquisition board (http://open-ephys.org/#/acquisition-board/)

Photo: Open Ephys

Open Ephys just distributed 100 of its acquisition boards to neuroscience

labs around the world.

uses a single microchip for the four steps. The chipwas recently developed by

, based in Los Angeles.“Once we realized these chips were available, itseemed kind of silly to keep buying the big systems,”Siegle says

Intan Technologies(http://www.intantech.com/)

.

The president and cofounder of Intan, Reid Harrison,says that shrinking and consolidating the gear wasn’tthat complicated—it mostly required initiative. “It’ssuch a niche market that no one else had tried tominiaturize the technology,” he says. “It’s not exactlyon the scale of CPUs and cellphones, which drivemost IC technology.” However, Harrison says herecognized a need for his small, multipurpose chips.Neuroscientists are always trying to fit moreelectrodes into an animal’s brain to record moreneural activity, he says, which requires ever tinierdevices with the electronics close to the electrodes.“You could put 1,000 electrodes in the brain, but you

don’t want 1,000 wires on an animal that’s supposed to be mobile,” he says. The Intan chips takeinformation from up to 64 electrodes and turn it into one digital signal, eliminating the confusion of wiring.

The major neural technology companies have designed products that incorporate Intan’s chips, but they alsoswear by their larger, multichip systems. Keith Stengel, the founder of ,in Bozeman, Mont., says that in his big systems, each component is optimized for peak performance. “A lotof our customers have said that you buy a Neuralynx system for the serious work that you’re going topublish, and then you get an Open Ephys system as a second system, for grad students to start their researchon,” he says.

Neuralynx (http://neuralynx.com/)

Illustration: Open Ephys

Andy Gotshalk, CEO of , in Salt Lake City,

also argues that the commercial products willcontinue to be the gold standard. “You’re not going tobe moving into FDA clinical trials using an OpenEphys system,” he says. The commercial productscome with guarantees of quality and reliability, hesays, as well as intensive customer support. Gotshalksays his customers are willing to pay a premium forthat backing.

Blackrock Microsystems(http://www.blackrockmicro.com/)

Both Stengel and Gotshalk say they welcome OpenEphys to the market and think that its systems can filla niche. They’re also willing to work with the upstartto make sure their commercial software works withthe Open Ephys hardware. Harrison agrees that thecommunity is happy to have another option to work

Open Ephys offers building instructions for this head-mounted neural implant

system for mice.with, and he draws a parallel to the computingindustry. “The existing tools are like the PCs and theMacs of the neuroscience world, but now we also have

this Linux,” Harrison says. “It’s a lot less expensive, and you can hack it yourself, but it’s not for everyone.”