The Virtual Instrument For Neural Signals Recording & Spike Sorting Based On LabVIEW

Action Potential is very important for nervous system to transmit information. Neurons keep touch with each other by sending series of action potentials. It is of great significance to record the neural action potentials and classify the neural spikes for studying the nervous system.One task of this paper is establishing acquisition system of the neural action potentials, and performing extracellular recording on rat, gecko or another animals. The experimental method has been accumulated and steadied through plentiful experiments. The brain stereotaxic apparatus which plays a key role in the experiment was redesigned and improved.Signals recorded via microelectrodes usually consist of spikes from different neurons surrounding the electrodes. It is very important to classify the spikes mixed in one group to each neuron. Another task of this paper is the development of a spike-sorting virtual instrument based on LabVIEW, performing spike-sorting algorithms and methods including threshold detection, principle component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis, etc. By user-friendly GUI items, the virtual instrument is capable of these processing conveniently and interactively.The accuracy of the virtual instrument was confirmed by compared with commercial spike sorting software. The virtual instrument has already be used to analyze our experimental result.