Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
Nat Biomed Eng. 2020 Feb;4(2):223-231. doi: 10.1038/s41551-020-0516-y. Epub 2020 Feb 12.
The use of nanophotonics to rapidly and precisely reconfigure light beams for the optical stimulation of neurons in vivo has remained elusive. Here we report the design and fabrication of an implantable silicon-based probe that can switch and route multiple optical beams to stimulate identified sets of neurons across cortical layers and simultaneously record the produced spike patterns. Each switch in the device consists of a silicon nitride waveguide structure that can be rapidly (<20 μs) reconfigured by electrically tuning the phase of light. By using an eight-beam probe, we show in anaesthetized mice that small groups of single neurons can be independently stimulated to produce multineuron spike patterns at sub-millisecond precision. We also show that a probe integrating co-fabricated electrical recording sites can simultaneously optically stimulate and electrically measure deep-brain neural activity. The technology is scalable, and it allows for beam focusing and steering and for structured illumination via beam shaping. The high-bandwidth optical-stimulation capacity of the device might facilitate the probing of the spatiotemporal neural codes underlying behaviour.
利用纳米光子学快速精确地重新配置光束，以便对活体神经元进行光刺激，这一目标一直难以实现。在这里，我们报告了一种可植入的基于硅的探针的设计和制造，该探针可以切换和路由多个光束，以刺激皮层层中已识别的神经元集，并同时记录产生的尖峰模式。该设备中的每个开关都由氮化硅波导结构组成，通过电调谐光的相位可以快速（<20 μs）重新配置。通过使用八光束探头，我们在麻醉小鼠中表明，可以独立地刺激小群单个神经元，以亚毫秒级精度产生多神经元尖峰模式。我们还表明，集成共制造的电记录位点的探头可以同时进行光刺激和电测量深部脑神经活动。该技术具有可扩展性，允许光束聚焦和转向，并通过光束整形进行结构照明。该设备的高带宽光刺激能力可能有助于探测行为背后的时空神经编码。
