Electrodes[03-AUG-22] This page presents details of the performance, construction, and development of our various electrodes and lead terminations we provide for our implantable telemetry devices, such as the Subcutaneous Transmitter (SCT). For a table listing the electrodes and terminations we provide for implantable devices, consult the Termination Letter Codes and Electrode Letter Codes tables here. Lead terminations are attached to the end of a lead, or formed on the end of the lead. Some terminations act as electrodes in themselves: screw terminations can be used to record EEG directly and bare wire terminations can be stretched, bent, clipped, and held in place with a screw for EcoG recording. Others terminations allow us to connect the lead to a more elaborate electrode during surgery.
We discuss the encapsulation of implantable transmitters in Encapsulation. We discuss the design and manufacture of their silicone-insulated, helical, stainless-steel leads in Flexible Wires. The electrical contacts at the ends of these leads are what we call the electrodes. The primary purpose of the electrodes is to detect a biometric potential for transmission and recording. We designed the SCT system to monitor the electroencephalograph (EEG) or local field potential (LFP) in a live animal. For a discussion of the sources of the EEG and LPF signals, see The Source of EEG. Here we present the performance of various electrode in recording the extracellular potential within the cortex of a live animal.
[27-JAN-21] We discuss electrode impedance, which is primarily a discussion of the impedance between two metal objects placed in saline, in the Electrode Impedance section of our essay on The Source of EEG.
[03-MAY-23] The flexible leads of a subcutaneous transmitter contain a stainless steel helix to carry biometric signals to the transmitter's amplifier. The wire itself is 316 stainless steel, which resists corrosion well, but will not accept solder unless treated with acid flux. The bare stainless steel wire itself is our most popular electrode for monitoring ECoG.
The bare-wire electrode allows the experimenter re-create the electrode without using solder or acid flux. We use a scalpel to remove silicone from the tip of the lead so as to expose the bare wire. The tutorial movie below shows how to remove silicone from one of our 0.7-mm diameter leads.
The procedure for our 0.5-mm diameter leads is similar, but more delicate. We have an additional movie to explain the extra precautions one must take to remove the silicone from these smaller leads.
To record electrocorticography (ECoG) with a bare wire, we stretch it, bend it, and secure it with a screw. We stretch the exposed steel helix until it is nearly straight. We cut it to a length that will reach through a skull hole and penetrate the brain to the correct depth, or rest upon the surface of the brain. A penetration of 1 mm gives a more powerful EEG signal than a wire tip on the dura. In rats, we recommend a length of 5 mm. In mice, 2.5 mm. We bend the wire by ninety degrees half-way along its length. We place the wire in a skull hole and lay the insulated lead along the surface of the skull. We thread a screw into the hole. The exposed wire on top of the skull allows the screw to avoid interfering with the silicone insulation of the lead, and will allow dental cement to bond to the wire directly. In rats, the 2.5 mm wire passing through the skull will penetrate roughly 1 mm into the brain. In mice, the penetration of the 1.2-mm wire tip will be similar, because the skull is thinner. With the wire held in place by a screw, we cover the screw with dental cement. The cement anchors and insulates the head of the screw and bonds to the wire itself. The helix will flex between the transmitter and the anchor screw, but the bare wire and the screw will be fixed with respect to the skull. Movement of the brain with respect to the skull will generate movement artifact, but we will not see sudden steps due to intermittent metal-on-metal contact. Nor will we see EMG artifact from muscles above the screw, because we have insulated the top of the screw with cement.
When we retrieve the transmitter from the animal, we tend to cut the leads where they emerge from the skull cement. It is possible to dissolve dental cement with vinegar, but usually the animal's brain is needed intact for examination. Having cut the leads, we remove silicone from the tips to expose more wire, and so we can re-create the bare wire electrode for a second implantation.
If we want to look deeper into the brain, however, we cannot use the straightened bare helix directly because it has no insulation and because it is not straight enough to locate precisely. But we can use the unstraightened helix in a crimp contact with a depth electrode. The depth electrode allows us to measure local field potential (LFP) deeper in the brain. The crimp contact contains no solder or any metal other than stainless steel. The crimp ferrule and the wire we are crimping to are all made of stainless steel. We use crimp contacts whenever we want to reduce low-frequency noise, such as when we are recording cortical spreading depressions (CSDs).
Another use of the bare wire is to measure electromyography (EMG). We stretch the wire, put a 180° bend in the wire near the end of the silicone insulation, and cut off the excess wire to make a hook. We insert the hook in the muscle we want to monitor. The hook holds the lead in place sufficiently well to measure the EMG amplitude, provided we filter out movement artifact below 20 Hz.
The S-Electrode is a bare stranded stainless steel wire. To make the S-Electrode, we solder the stranded steel wire to our helical lead and insulate them both. We cut the stranded lead and remove some insulation from the end to reveal the strands. These we can place on muscles beneath the skin.
[02-AUG-22] We fasten screws and pins to the ends of our electrode leads with solder joints. We describe how to tin the stainless steel leads with acid flux, and solder a screw or pin to the freshly-tinned wire in the Solder Joint section of our Flexible Leads page.
[05-FEB-16] Stainless steel screws are useful as electrodes for EEG recording, because they are easy to anchor to the skull. We drill a hole slightly smaller than the screww, and thread the screw into the hole. The steel wire of the pick-up lead is soldered to the head of the screw. If the screw is large enough, we solder the wire to one side of the slot in the screw head. During implantation, we turn the screw with the slot. But of course we have a pick-up lead connected to the screw, so the lead rotates along with the screw. In order to leave the pick-up lead relaxed when the screw is in place, we must pre-twist it by the same number of turns required to thread the screw down into the hole. If the screw is small enough, we can simply press the threads into the skull hole, hold the screw in place with cement, and in the days following, the skull will grow into the threads of the screw and hold it firmly in place. Thus we avoid, with the smaller screw, any pre-twisting of the lead.
The screw is in electrical contact with the wire at its head, with the skull it passes through, and with the brain at its tip. We cover the head of the screw with dental cement, so it is insulated from body fluids and from any muscles that may lie over it, such as is the case for lateral skull screws in rats. Because the conductivity of the skull is low compared to that of the brain, the screw, despite its large and clumsy appearance, provides a connection to the surface of the brain. We have used skull screws in hundreds of implantations, and they provide reliable, artifact-free recordings. Despite the need to pre-twist the leads for larger screws, the skull screw remains the easiest electrode with which to obtain a reliable recording.
The following table summarizing the dimensions and properties of the screws we have used with our transmitters.
| Name | Diameter (mm) | Thread Pitch (mm) | Length (mm) | Applications |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0-80 1/8" | 1.52 | 0.32 | 3.2 | Rat skull when >8 weeks. |
| 00-90 1/16" | 1.2 | 0.28 | 1.6 | Rat skull when <8 weeks. |
| 000-120 1/16" | 0.86 | 0.21 | 1.6 | Rat or mouse skull electrode. |
| M0.5-0.125-1.0 | 0.50 | 0.125 | 1.0 | Mouse skull electrode. |
| M0.5-0.125-0.6 | 0.50 | 0.125 | 0.6 | Mouse skull electrode. |
[04-AUG-10] We obtain samples of a screw, 00-96X1-16 from Plastics One, from CHB. With the help of acid flux, we solder screws to the tips of the wires of an A3013A, as shown here. The wires are soldered to the top sides of the heads of the screws. We tried soldering the wires to the underside of the screw heads, but we found that solder spread all down the length of the screw, obscuring the threads. Even when we solder the wire to the top of the head, we must take care not to allow solder to spread to the threads, and we do this by threading the screw into a small hole in a piece of box cardboard. The cardboard also provides us with a means of holding the screw while we make the joint.
[12-AUG-10] Archive M1281455686 contains EEG recorded by screws in No8 compared to EEG recorded by epoxy contacts in No10. The screws provide a stable baseline. Both contacts provide wave burst and seizure detection. The screws appear to be slighly less sensitive to seizure activity than silver epoxy or the bare wire electrodes. Peak seizure power in the 2−10 Hz range is around 5000 k counts-sq compared to 10,000 k counts-sq for the other electrodes.
[15-AUG-10] CHB implants No6 with screws. The wires of this transmitter are only 100 mm long, a bit short. We see large transient jumps on the signal. Sameer reports, "I think the unstable baseline from transmitter#6 can be attributed to the use of epoxy to secure one of the screws instead of a drilled hole. Due to some reason, I think size or location of leads, YingPeng couldn't drill it in. However, the other screw was fastened into the skull."
[25-AUG-10] We receive two sizes of 303 stainless steel screws from SmallParts (now Amazon Supply). Both have what is called the binding head, which is flatter than the screws we started with, as you can see in the photograph below.
All these screws are 1.6 mm long (1/16"). The 000-120 has diameter 0.86 mm with thread pitch 0.21 mm. The 00-90 has diameter 1.2 mm with thread pitch 0.28 mm. the 00-96 has diameter 1.2 mm and thread pitch 0.26 mm.
[03-APR-11] We have settled upon the 00-90, 1.6-mm long binding head screw as the standard for the A3019D transmitter for implanting in rats. For mice, Louise Upton has chosen an M0.5-0.125 screw, the B0038QOYFA, which has a thread 1.1 mm long and 0.5 mm in diameter, with pitch 0.125 mm. We soldered this screw to the 70-mm leads of an A3019A. She drilled holes in the skull of a dead mouse and declared the screw to be the perfect size. She did not thread the screw into the hole, but instead pushed it in. The threads held the screw in place.
[03-APR-11] We study 15 hours of recordings from ION/UCL, from eight control animals. The transmitters are A3019Ds with 00-90 binding head screws 1.6 mm long. The leads are insulated right up to the solder joints on the screw head. The screws are set directly into the skull with dental cement to hold them in place and insulate them. For a typical recording from eight sets of screw electrodes, see here.
We see few artifacts in the EEG. The amplitude of each trace is around 40 μV. Another similar period of recordings from eight different animals with the same electrodes shows 40 μV baseline EEG also. The consistency between the baseline amplitudes suggests that the screws are giving a repeatable contact with the brain.
[04-APR-11] ION/UCL suspects that the 00-90 screws are coming loose from the skull after a few weeks. "Yes, I also had the impression that the power per frequency band was quite consistent between animals, at least during the first week of recording. After that power tends to decrease across all bands in quite a lot of animals. This is probably caused by the skull getting thicker and slowly pushing the screws out. This ends in rats loosing their electrodes after 2 to 4 weeks. I've now soldered larger screws on a couple of transmitters and will also add a few more screws just to anchor the headpiece to see if this will enable recordings with stable band power for two or three months."
[13-SEP-12] By now we have supplied to ION over thirty transmitters with 00-80 screws, 1.6 mm in diameter and 3.2 mm long. These screws require a hole in the skull of diameter roughly 1.2 mm. They appear to work well for implants greater than four weeks, when the smaller screws lose sensitivity.
[12-JUN-13] Our M0.5-0.125-1.0 screw is $8 each in quantity 100, and it is often out of stock at the supplier. By now, Louise Upton and Sukhvir Wright of Oxford University have implanted roughly forty transmitters with these screws, and they found them to be too long. They use a 0.4-mm thick washer to back the screw away from the top of the skull. The bone is 0.4 mm thick, so the tip of the screw would be roughly 0.2 mm into the brain, pressing upon the surface. Today we ordered, from US Microscrew, quantity 1000 of a custom-made screw, diameter 0.5 mm, shaft length 0.6 mm, which we name M0.5-0.125-0.6.
[23-JUL-13] We receive our 1000 screws and find that their threads are fine, but the heads are mangled by the slot cut, as shown here (US Microscrew, 0.5 mm diameter, 0.6 mm length screw, first attempt).
[02-AUG-13] We receive from US Microscrew another 1000 screws to replace the first set. This lot don't have a slot cut in the head. We cover the entire head with solder, so we don't need the slot. Removing the slot makes the part easier to make.
[05-APR-23] These M0.5 threaded electrodes have provided hundreds of thousands of hours of reliable recordings.
[05-FEB-16] Gold-plated pins allow us to connect the end of our EEG lead to depth electrodes. The depth electrode is too cumbersome to pass easily beneath the skin of an animal from the transmitter to the head. The pin, on the other hand, is easy to move up under the skin. Our contact pins are made by Mill-Max, and are summarized in their data sheet. The photograph below shows our D Electrode, which mates with our H and J Electrodes.
The pins are easy to solder to a steel wire. They provide a gold-plated finish, which mates well with the gold-plated finish of a socket, to provide a corrosion-resistant electrical contact within dental cement saturated with water vapor.
Our F and G eletrodes are pins that mate with electrodes made by Plastics One.
When you choose an electrode with a socket, we will look at the socket drawing and choose a pin that will fit sungly and take up as little vertical height as possible, to keep your implantation compact.
[15-MAR-23] A crimp contact is one where we bring together two wires we want to join, surround them with a steel tube, which we call the ferrule, squeeze the tube, and so hold the two wires together. No solder is involved, which means we reduce the chemical artifact generated by the electrodes. Crimp contacts are not reliable when made with straight, solid wires. The wires inside the ferrule must push outwards with a force that persists even as we flex the wires. Our helical leads are made of stainless spring steel, and are ideal for crimping inside a short length of hypodermic steel tube. When we want to connect a straight, solid steel wire to a helical lead end, we insert the stright wire into the core of the helix, then slide the ferrule over the helix and squash the ferrule with pliers. Our crimp contacts consist of a Q-Ferrule and a 125-μm diameter bare stainless steel wire, such as terminates our X-Electrode. The following video shows how we make the Q-Ferrule and crimp it to an X-Electrodes.
The crimp contact requires that the bare steel wire enter the central cavity of the helical lead. The spring in our B-Leads has outer diameter 450 μm and inner diameter 250 μ. A bare 125-μm diameter steel wire fits easily into the helix of the spring. The ferrule is 2-mm long with inner diameter 510 μm and 50-μm walls. We secure the ferrule to the spring by squeezing the far end next to the insulation. The ferrule squashes the two together, creating a press-fit contact that is maintained through movement and stress by the compression of the spring. To perform the crimp, we recommend modified forceps, like the ones shown below. We cut off the forcep clamps, cut short the forcep jaws, and grind the jaws down until they are 2 mm wide at the tip, and 4 mm high. During surgery, we hold the Q-Ferrule in the jaws of these pliers, and slide it over the bare steel wire to which we want to make a crimp contact, and squeeze as tightly as we can to squash the ferrule.
When you want to make a crimp contact, specify the Q-Ferrule with the letter "Q" in your part sensor part number's electrode list. When re-using an SCT, remove insulation from the end of the lead with the help of a scalpel, as shown in this video.
[20-JAN-20] We have three gauges of hypodermic 304SS tube: 304H23XX (20 mil inner diameter, 2 mil wall, Gauge 23XX), 304H22XX (22 mil inner diameter, 3 mil wall, Gauge 22XX), and 304H21XX (29 mil inner diameter, 2 mil wall, Gauge 21XX). We cut 3-mm sections of each by scribing with a triangular file until we break through the wall, then breaking by bending with pliers. Run a 0.4-mm diameter steel probe through the interior to round the ends. The result is 3-mm crimp ferrules. The 23XX is barely larger than our 18-mil helical lead. We screw the helix through the ferrule, put our 5-mil diameter stainless steel wire inside from the other end, and crimp. The 22XX is wide enough for the helix to slide through easily, but we can crimp the helix in place by squeezing one end of the ferrule. The 21XX is fragile, but with care we make the ferrules. When compressed, they are wider, but they work just as well. We would prefer 316SS for our ferrules, but 316SS tubes with 2-mil wall thickness are not available in 20-mil diameter. Our previous ferrules were 304SS, and we like the ease with which the thin-walled tube can be crimped. We order from MicroGroup 1000 of 2-mm ferrules made with the 304H23XX.
[05-APR-23] Our crimp contacts have become easier to use and easier to make over the years. We began by wrapping the straight 125-μm diameter solid wire of the X-Electrode in a 3-mm length of 450-μm steel helix. We demonstrate crimping a 250-μm helix to a 125-μm wire with this original procedure in this tutorial video. Later, we eliminated the extra piece of helix and crimped the wire and lead together immediately with a laser-cut ferrule, as we show in this tutorial video. Our current solution is to partially-crimp one end of the ferrule to the lead helix, so that we can grab the ferrule and lead with forceps, slide onto the electrode wire, and crimp with one hand.
[05-APR-23] To reach farther into brain, we need a stiff, insulated wire. We assemble depth electrodes for the convenience of customers, but we also provide a Depth Electrode Assembly Guide. When implanting a depth electrode, we run the pick-up lead along the surface of the skull to the electrode, where we attach the lead to the electrode either with a crimp contact or a socket contact. During surgery, the depth electrode must be held firmly while we make this contact. Afterwards the electrode must be maneuvered into the correct location on the skull and lowered to the correct depth. Each electrode provides a mounting structure by which we can hold the electrode during surgery. In the case of the X-Electrode, shown below, the mounting structure is a hypodermic tube. In the case of the R-Electrode, the mounting structure is a threaded plastic cannula guide. To secure the electrode to the skull, we place an anchor screw through the skull nearby and enclose the depth electrode and the anchor screw with cement. Depending upon the electrode, we remove the mounting structure and seal with another layer of cement, or we leave the mounting structure intact to act as a cannula guide.
The X-Electrode, part number SDE-X, provides a 450-μm diameter stainless steel tube as a mounting fixture. To hold the tube, we recommand a clamp like the RWD 68201, which attaches to your stereotactic mount. The tube has a slot cut into it, out of which we run the electrode wire for connection to an electrode lead with a crimp contact. Because the crimp contact does not contain any solder, the signal recorded by the electrode will contain far less low-frequency chemical artifacts. Crimp contacts allow us to record slow signals like cortical spreading depressions (CSDs). For use with the crimp contact, we must use one of our B-Leads with an X-Ferrule on the end. The video below shows how to crimp the X-Electrode to a bare helical wire.
The W-Electrode, part number SDE-W, is an X-Electrode equipped with a socket. The W-Electrode introduces two solder joints into the electrode: one between a helical lead and the pin, and the other between the electrode wire and the socket. Do not use W-Electrodes to record cortical spreading depressions.
The R-Electrode, part number SDE-R, provides a cannula through which we can inject a substance into subject animal's brain, and subsequently record from the neighborhood of the injection. The wire is parallel to the axis of the cannula, flush up against the cannula protrusion. The socket is 3±1 mm from the plastic thread. The plastic thread is 5.7 mm long. The wire is 10 mm long, allowing the user to cut it back to the length they want. The cannula tube is stainless steel, inner diameter 290-330 μm, outer diameter 470 μm.
The R and W Electrodes provide a socket into which we can plug a gold-plated pin. The pin that fits the socket is the that we attach to the end of any of our implantable electrode leads. We buy straightened, teflon-insulated, stainless steel wire from A-M Systems. We use stainless steel wire rather than platinum-iridium or silver wire because it is stiffer. When it comes to depth electrodes, stiffer is better.
[15-MAR-23] We no longer manufacture either the J-Electrode or the H-Electrode, except by special request, and we do not recommend their use. The J-Electrode provided a stainless steel wire mounted on a plastic cannula guide. With a clamp that holds the cannula guide, we can lower the electrode into position. The H-Electrode provided a platinum-iridium wire, but was otherwise identical to the J-Electrode.
The guide cannula permits the implanter to lower the electrode into the brain while monitoring the EEG signal. Once the electrode is in position, we cover the socket and anchor screw with dental cement and let it cure. We take care not to bury the tip of the guide cannula in the cement. Once the cement is cured, we cut the Pt-In wire where it emerges from the top of the guide cannula. We raise the guide cannula off the wire. We cut the wire where it emerges from the cement. We cover the exposed tip of the wire with more cement. Now the depth electrode is fastened to the anchor screw by dental cement, and there are no exposed metal contacts.
[08-MAR-16] Here are instructions for implanting J or H-Electrodes. Our collaborators at ION/UCL took these instructions and composed these Pictoral Instructions, which you may find more useful than our written list.
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | Remove from gel pack and inspect electrode. Locate the opening on the socket. |
| 2 | Press transmitter lead D-Pin into the socket. If small plug comes out the other side, discard. |
| 3 | Remove D-Pin from socket. Be careful not to bend the wire. |
| 4 | Cut wire to length. From socket to tip is skull thickness plus depth. |
| 5 | Sterlize with alcohol. If kapton tape comes off, leave it off. |
| 6 | Straighten wire if necessary. It may be bent at the end of the guide cannula. |
| 7 | Mount guide cannula thread in stereotactic clamp. Grip on the tape, if it is still attached. |
| 8 | Implant transmitter and insert D-Pin into socket. Be sure to insert into the correct end of the socket. |
| 9 | Lower wire into skull hole until socket rests upon skull. The electrode lead will be running along the skull surface. |
| 10 | Coat skull around socket with VetBond surface treatment. You can skip this step if you do not have VetBond. |
| 11 | Cover socket with dental cement. Do not allow the guide cannula to become fixed in the cement. |
| 12 | Wait for dental cement to cure, then cut wire loop at top of guide cannula. |
| 13 | Raise up the clamp to pull guide cannula off the wire, leaving wire sticking up. |
| 14 | Cut the wire flush with the top of the dental cement. |
| 15 | Cover the wire stub with dental cement. |
[26-SEP-15] Edinburgh University implants the prototype H-Electrode in trangenic mice. The figure below shows depth and surface field potentials recorded simultaneously with a dual-channel subcutaneous transmitter. The surface and reference electrodes are 0.5-mm screws.
When implanting the H-Electrode, the Edinburgh group monitored EEG from the H-Electrode while lowering the tip of the electrode into the hippocampus. They adjusted the depth of the electrode until they obtained the largest possible EEG amplitude. The 125-μm tip of the depth electrode has impedance roughly 10 kΩ, compared to 2 kΩ for the screw. The depth recording has baseline amplitude 400 μV compared to 80 μV for the surface recording. There we see one or two step artifacts per hour in these dual-channel recordings. But the artifacts are shared between the depth and surface recordings, like this, so they cannot be the result of movement of the H-Electrode alone.
[08-AUG-16] We receive archive M1470389836.ndf from ION/UCL. Two A3028H-DDC transmitters are implanted in two conscious, freely-moving mice with two J-Electrodes each. Amplitude is roughly 80 μV from all channels. We look through the hour-long recording and see none of the step artifacts that motivated the development of the H and J-Electrodes.
We note that ION/UCL did not adjust the depth of the J-Electrode to obtain the maximum amplitude of EEG, but rather set the depth to a certain value during implantation without monitoring EEG.
[05-FEB-16] Conductive epoxy might allow us to cement a bare wire directly onto the skull in two places so as to provide EEG recording without drilling any holes. We tried silver epoxy, as we describe below. The recordings pick up muscular activity from the scalp of the host rat, which we see also in un-insulated screw electrodes. Such activity we can detect and classify in order to distinguish it from EEG. The recordings showed continuous drift in the baseline voltage, not by transient steps as we see in poorly-secured wire electrodes, but as a drift of several millivolts over one-second intervals. Such drifts we can overcome with our event classification. The conductive epoxy recordings are, we believe, adequate for event detection. But the electrodes themselves are not as reliable as screws, in that they tend to come loose. More work with silver epoxy might increase reliability, but such work has not yet occurred.
[12-AUG-10] CHB implanted transmitter No10 and glued the ends of the analog wires to the animal's skull using silver epoxy, which provides an electrically conducting contact. With these contacts, we observed seizure-like activity in a non-epileptic rat, as shown here in archive M1281121460. We are convinced that the epoxy contacts are picking up EEG. Later, in archive M1281455686, we can compare No10's contacts with No8's steel screw contacts. When we say baseline signal we mean the signal low-pass filtered to 1 Hz or so, which is a measure of the average value of the signal over a fraction of a second.
From this one experiment, we see the baseline swinging up and down compared to the stable baseline we obtain from the screws. But the silver epoxy contact sensitivity compares well to that of the bare wires, and exceeds that of the screw contacts.
The following plot shows power in the 2−20 Hz band for the two transmitters during three hours of recording.
The peak power from No10 corresponds to vigorous seizures like this one, not any transient spikes or level shifts. In addition to seizure detection, the silver epoxy contacts are also sensitive to wave bursts in the 40−160 Hz band. The plot below shows simultaneous wave-bursts from No8 (screws) and No10 (epoxy).
It appears that the silver epoxy has only one disadvantage compared to screws: a moving baseline. But the moving baseline does not appear to interfere with seizure or wave burst detection, and the silver epoxy method does not require holes in the skull.
[30-MAY-17] The movement of electrodes with respect to the surrounding animal tissue will add step-changes in potential to the EEG signal. By default, we equip the amplifiers in our SCTs with a high-pass filter with cut-off frequency 0.3 Hz. When a step-change passes through this high-pass filter, it come out looking like a pulse with a sharp front edge, followed by a relaxation half a second long. The theoretical step response of the A3028B, for example, is the blue graph shown here. If we solder the two leads of a transmitter together, drop the transmitter in water, and stir it around, the standard deviation of the signal is less than 20 μV and we see no step artifact. If we separate the leads and allow them to measure the variation in electric potential in the water as we stir, we see 1-mV rumble, but not sharp steps. When we allow the electrodes to make intermittent contact with one another as we stir that we start to see 10-mV steps in the signal. We call these steps "movement artifact". The longer-term changes in potential that we observe with amplifiers that have no high-pass filter we call "chemical artifact", and we discuss those artifacts separately.
Movement artifact arises in EEG recordings when the electrodes are not secured with respect to the skull. As implanters have learned to secure wires and screws more effectively to the animal skull, the frequency of these artifacts has decreased. In mice, these artifacts are particularly difficult to eliminate. Here are some examples of movement artifact from mouse recordings.
Here we see pulses caused by steps of order 10 mV, which are shaped into pulses by the transmitter's high-pass filter. In the figure below we see far larger artifact from the same M0.5 skull screws in another mouse.
Here we see large artifact with more complex progression, also from skull screws in a mouse. The amplitude is 15 mVpp.
We are not certain of the origin of the following features. The two traces are from a dual-channel transmitter implanted in a mouse. If the electrode potential of the common electrode changes, we expect the effect upon the X and Y channels to be shared. If the electrode potential of either X or Y changes, we expect to see the effect only on X or Y. Here we see opposite changes in X and Y.
The number of movement artifacts in a recording varies greatly from one implant to the next, and is a strong function of who performs the surgery. Recordings from rats tend to have fewer than one artifact per hour for all experienced implanters. Movement artifact in mice varies from fewer than one per hour to hundreds of artifacts per hour. Those implanters whose recordings are almost free of artifact have reduced the artifact rate by working on better anchoring of their electrodes on the mouse skull. We are currently working on developing a guide to successful implantation in mice.
[30-JAN-23] Most of our SCTs provide a 0.3-Hz high-pass filter to remove electrode potential and changes in electrode potential from the recorded signal. If we want to look for phenomena such as cortical spreading depressions, however, we must use an SCT with no high-pass filter, and now we become concerned with changes in electrode potential that take place over tens of seconds. We call such potential changes chemical artifact. Solder joints generate sustained chemical artifact when they are immersed in saline. No matter how hard we try to keep water off a solder joint in a head fixture, it makes its way to the solder joints and starts the generation of chemical artifact. Here is an example of chemical artifact recorded from a mouse with depth electrodes that use soldered pins and sockets.
To reduce chemical artifact, we must eliminate solder joints. One way to eliminate solder joints is to connect our helical bare-wire leads to a stainless steel wire with a short length of steel tube crushed with forceps, as we describe in crimp contacts. Another way to eliminate solder joints is to hold a bare wire in place on the skull with a screw. Both methods provide a dramatic reduction in chemical artifact, but the crimp contact provides far better immunity to movement than the screw contact, as we demonstrate below.
[18-JAN-19] We would like to compare the number of chemical artifacts generated by crimp and screw contacts. Both these contacts are free of solder, but the crimp contact is secured by a squashed steel ferrule pressing on a spring, while the screw contact is secured by a thread pressing a wire into a rigid mounting material such as bone or, in our experiment, dental cement. We take two transmitters with bandwidth 0-160 Hz and place them in 1% saline in two separate petri dishes, as shown below.
One device we equip with two crimps, one leading nowhere and one connecting to a bare steel wire. The other device we equip with two screws and a mock animal skull made out of dental cement. We record continuously for two days within a faraday enclosure that is disturbed only be changes in ventilation and lighting.
During the night, when the lights are off in the OSI office, nobody is moving around, and nobody is touching the table upon which our experiment is running, the recordings are like the example shown below.
During the day, we see step changes in potential followed by relaxation on both channels. We call these "pulse artifacts". In forty-eight hours of recording we see 31 pulse artifacts from the screw electrodes and 9 from the crimp electrodes. The recording below shows several pulses from the screws.
We sometimes see changes in both signals occuring at the same time. In M1547588237 we see a pulse from the crimps occurring at the same time as a linear decrease in the voltage recorded by the screws. The screws suffer from more pulses, but the crimps show more short-term drift, as in M1547599037, and occasionaly larger drift as in M1547602637. When we return to the petri dishes after two days, the electrodes are still covered with water, but barely so. We perform a series of tests.
After this hour, we leave the dishes alone. The salt is dissolving. The lights and heating are on. For the next three hours, we only one pulse, see M1547825546. Other than this pulse, the signal remains stable to within a hundred microvolts.
[09-MAY-19] Our collaborators at ION/UCL implanted an A3028SZ2-AA equipped with two X-Electrodes crimped to the bare ends of the leads. There are no solder joints. The frequency response of this device is 0.0-80 Hz with dynamic range ±100 mV. The plot below shows the first fifteen hours of recording after implantation.
The drift of several millivolts in the first two hours is consistent with the transmitter battery voltage settling after it is first turned on. In the subsequent 26 hours we find no sign of chemical artifact. The animal dies an hour before the end of the recording, and after death, we see the potential rise by 5 mV in 20 minutes.
[01-MAR-21] Crimp contacts used with a recording bandwidth of 0.0-160 Hz record cortical spreading depression (CSD), as shown below.
Here is an example of a spontaneous seizure recorded with 0.0-160 Hz showing changes in EEG baseline during a spontaneous seizure.
For crimp contacts, we must select our B-Type leads, which provide a 450-μm steel helix that is well-suited for crimping to electrode wires.
[20-JUL-21] We find that failure to wash off acid flux from X-Electrode tubes causes corrosion in the laser-cut stainless steel surface of the tube's slot, as shown below. This corrosion will not affect the functioning of the electrode, but is unsightly and could, if allowed to continue, cause the tube to snap.
[03-NOV-22] We hear from one of our collaborators that crimping during surgery is a two-person process: we need more than two hands to hold everything in place for the crimp. Part of the problem is that the crimping pliers are so large. We order smaller pliers and grind down their jaws to produce a smaller tool. The shortened jaws are powerful enough to squash the crimp ferrule at their tips.
[14-DEC-22] We are working on a new electrode at the request of Rob Wykes, which we are calling the R-Electrode. We take a small cannula designed for mice, PlasticsOne part "C200GS-5/SPC GUIDE 26GATW BLK (F/O)", and attach a steel wire and socket to it like so.
[06-APR-23] We alter our R-Electrode so that the wire is flush up against the cannula protrusion.
We receive straightened wire from A-M Systems in 300-mm sections. The teflon insulation of the wire has been roughened by the straightening process, as we can see in the photograph below. When we roll the straightened wire in our fingers, we can feel that it is no longer round.
We test the insulation of several sections for breaches by immersing in water and measuring resistance between the stripped end of the section and the water. We see no sign of any electrical contact through the insulation. When we push the straightened wire into our electrode post, the fit is tighter than for unstraightened wire. Nevertheless, we proceed to make a dozen electrodes with the straightened wire, and the result is W and X Electrodes with perfectly straight wires, and no contact between the wire and the tube.
