Wireless-Systems

Our in vivo recording systems connect to almost all commercially available probes.

Depending on your experiment, you can connect probes for surface recordings or penetrating electrodes with single- or multi-shafts. Our headstages are equipped with single-row or Omnetics connectors, a standard in electrode fabrication.

We recommend the use of probes from NeuroNexus Technologies or ATLAS Neuroengineering. Please see their company websites for probe specifications and order information.

The biggest advantage of those headstages is that you do not have to give up valuable recording information when stimulating; the headstages can record and stimulate in parallel!

We offer the following headstage types, which are all compatible with all W2100-Systems, so you can easily upgrade your existing system by just adding a new headstage:

All devices of the Wireless-System are designed to be energy-efficient. The standard battery of the headstage permits continuous recording of all channels for approx. 2 hours (depends on channel count and sampling rate). Recharging is then realized via a USB charger.
When doing experiments with animals insensitive to weight, we also offer larger batteries, which provide longer recordings. Please contact Multi Channel Systems for more information on battery options.

For power-saving, the headstage switches to stand-by mode when the data acquisition is stopped. When recording continues, the headstage switches on automatically. Another possibility is to switch off the headstage completely via the data acquisition software. When switching on, you can use an infrared flashlight in order to not disturb the animal. Please see the graph below for switching possibilities.

Another possibility for energy-saving is provided by the software. It gives you the opportunity to switch off single channels, simply by deselecting them with one single mouse click. Apart from energy-saving, this feature also offers you the possibility for an even higher sampling rate. For example, a 32-channel headstage can sample all channels at 20 kHz/channel. When reducing the number of recorded channels to 16, the sampling rate is increased to 25kHz/channel. This way, you can always decide to look at some channels in even more detail.

• Multi Channel Experimenter is the data acquisition and online analysis tool. With an easy-to-use drag’n’drop interface, you simply create your virtual experiment with e.g. data source, filters, spike detection, and recorder. The software indicates the battery level and signal quality and displays the data in real-time.
• Multi Channel Analyzer is the offline analysis tool. You just import the data recorded with the Multi Channel Experimenter and then define your in-depth analysis with more instruments. The Multi Channel Analyzer also supports synchronized video input. This is an advantageous feature when doing behavioral research with freely moving animals. The video data and electrophysiological recordings are displayed in parallel and you can easily skip through the data from one event to the next.
• Multi Channel DataManager facilitates the data export for analysis with third-party programs. It supports all files generated with the Multi Channel Experimenter and then exports the data into HDF5 (e.g. Matlab, Python), .nex (Neuroexplorer) or .ced (Spike 2). Independent of the file format, the export is done quickly and a data compresssion is included.