• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.56 no.11
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• pp.1998-2003
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• 2007

A flexible but implantable polyimide-based neural implant was fabricated for reliable and stable long-term monitoring of neural activities from brain. The developed neural implant provides 3-dimensional (3D) $3{\times}3$ structure, avoids any hand handling, and makes the insertion more efficient and reliable. Any film curvature caused by residual stress was not observed in the electrode. The 3D flexible polyimide electrode penetrated a dense gel whose stiffness is close to live brain tissue, because a ${\sim}1{\mu}m$ thick nickel was electroplated along the edge of the shank in order to improve the stiffness. The recording sites were positioned at both side of the shank to increase the probability of recording neural signals from a target volume of tissue. Impedance remained stable over 72 hours because of extremely low moisture uptake in the polyimide dielectric layers. At electrical recording test in vitro, the fabricated electrode showed excellent recording performance, suggesting that this electrode has the potential for great recording from neuron firing and long-term implant performance.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.252-256
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• 2003

In this paper we describe the status of a silicon-based microelectrode for neural recording and an advanced neural interface. We have developed a silicon neural probe, using a combination of plasma and wet etching techniques. This process enables the probe thickness to be controlled precisely. To enhance the CMOS compatibility in the fabrication process, we investigated the feasibility of the site material of the doped polycrystalline silicon with small grains of around 50 nm in size. This silicon electrode demonstrated a favorable performance with respect to impedance spectra, surface topography and acute neural recording. These results showed that the silicon neural probe can be used as an advanced microelectrode for neurological applications.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics B
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• v.33B no.6
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• pp.164-175
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• 1996

In this thesis, to cope with severe intersymbol interference and nonlinear distotions of the digital magnetic recording channel a neural decision feedback equalizer (NDFE) and an adaptive neural equalizer (NE) are applied. The digital magnetic recording channels with various recording densities and different types of the nonlinear distortions are considered. The computer simulation shows that as the nonlinear distortion is increased, the neural equalizers (NdFE, NE) have advantages of approximately 2-4 dB in signal to noise ratio (SNR) over the onventional eualizers to reach sme bit error rate and, a sthe recording density is increased, 1~5 dB of SNR improvement are also gained. Especially the NdFE gives a superior performance over the other equalizers when there is a severe nonlinear distortion in the digital magnetic channel.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.129-140
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• 2017

In this paper, a $4{\times}32$-channel neural recording system capable of acquiring neural signals is introduced. Four 32-channel neural recording ICs, complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), a micro controller unit (MCU) with USB interface, and a PC are used. Each neural recording IC, implemented in $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS technology, includes 32 channels of analog front-ends (AFEs), a 32-to-1 analog multiplexer, and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The mid-band gain of the AFE is adjustable in four steps, and have a tunable bandwidth. The AFE has a mid-band gain of 54.5 dB to 65.7 dB and a bandwidth of 35.3 Hz to 5.8 kHz. The high-pass cutoff frequency of the AFE varies from 18.6 Hz to 154.7 Hz. The input-referred noise (IRN) of the AFE is $10.2{\mu}V_{rms}$. A high-resolution, low-power ADC with a high conversion speed achieves a signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) of 50.63 dB and a spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of 63.88 dB, at a sampling-rate of 2.5 MS/s. The effectiveness of our neural recording system is validated in in-vivo recording of the primary somatosensory cortex of a rat.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.195-196
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• 2007

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.35S no.12
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• pp.103-108
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• 1998

The increase in the capacity of the digital magnetic recording systems inevitably causes severe intersymbol interference (ISI) and nonlinear distortions in the digital magnetic recording channel. In this paper, to cope with severe ISI and nonlinear distortions a neural decision feedback equalizer (NDFE) is applied to the digital magnetic recording channel - partial erasure channel model. In the performance comparison of bit error probability (or bit error ratio : BER) between the NDFE and the conventional decision feedback equalizer (DFE) via computer simulations. It has been found that as nonlinear distortions increase the NDFE has more SNR (SIgnal-to-Noise Ratio) advantage over the conventional DFE. In addition, in spite of the same recording density, as nonlinear distortions are increased, NDFE has the better performance of BER and the greater stability over conventional DFE.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.33-42
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• 2009

A polymer-based flexible neural probe was fabricated for monitoring of neural activities from a brain. To improve the insertion stiffness, a 5 ${\mu}m$ thick biocompatible Au layer was electroplated between the top and bottom polymer layers. The developed neural probe penetrated a gel whose elastic modulus is similar to that of a live brain tissue without any fracture, To minimize mechanical residual stress and bending from the probe, two new methods were employed: (1) use of a thermal annealing process after completing the device and (2) incorporation of multiple different layers to compensate the residual stress between top and bottom layers. Mechanical bending around the probe tip was clearly removed after employing the two processes. In electrical test, the developed probe showed a proper impedance value to record neural signals from a brain and the result remained the same for 72 hours. In simple in-vitro probe characterization, the probe showed a great removal of residual stress and an excellent recording performance. The in-vitro recording results did not change even after 1 week, suggesting that this electrode has the potential for great recording from neuron firing and long-term implant performance.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.53 no.10
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• pp.34-39
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• 2016

A low-voltage, low-power analog front-end IC for neural recording implant devices is presented. The proposed IC consists of a low-noise neural amplifier and a programmable active bandpass filter to process neural signals residing in the band of 1 Hz to 5 kHz. The neural amplifier is based on a source-degenerated folded-cascode operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) for good noise performance while the following bandpass filter utilizes a low-power current-mirror based OTA with programmable high-pass cutoff frequencies from 1 Hz to 300 Hz and low-pass cutoff frequencies from 300 Hz to 8 kHz. The total recording analog front-end provides 53.1 dB of voltage gain, $4.68{\mu}Vrms$ of integrated input referred noise within 1 Hz to 10 kHz, and noise efficiency factor of 3.67. The IC is designed using $18-{\mu}m$ CMOS process and consumes a total of $3.2{\mu}W$ at 1-V supply voltage. The layout area of the IC is $0.19 mm^2$.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.67-71
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• 2001

Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is a blind source separation method using unsupervised learning and mutual information theory created in the late eighties and developed in the nineties. It has already succeeded in separating eye movement artifacts from human scalp EEG recording. Several characteristic sleep waves such as sleep spindle, K-complex, and positive occipital sharp transient of sleep (POSTS) can be recorded during sleep EEG recording. They are used as stage determining factors of sleep staging and might be reflections of unknown neural sources during sleep. We applied the ICA method to sleep EEG for sleep waves separation. Eighteen channel scalp longitudinal bipolar montage was used for the EEG recording. With the sampling rate of 256Hz, digital EEG data were converted into 18 by n matrix which was used as a original data matrix X. Independent source matrix U (18 by n) was obtained by independent component analysis method ($U=W{\timex}X$, where W is an 18 by 18 matrix obtained by ICA procedures). ICA was applied to the original EEG containing sleep spindle, K-complex, and POSTS. Among the 18 independent components, those containing characteristic shape of sleep waves could be identified. Each independent component was reconstructed into original montage by the product of inverse matrix of W (inv(W)) and U. The reconstructed EEG might be a separation of sleep waves without other components of original EEG matrix X. This result (might) demonstrates that characteristic sleep waves may be separated from original EEG of unknown mixed neural origins by the Independent Component Analysis (ICA) method.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2014

Electrical compound action potential (ECAP) can be recorded on cochlear implant. This study will investigate stimulation and recording to enhance the efficacy of ECAP. 34 articles was used. We analyzed pulse and stimulating condition, artifact suppression, recording condition. The cathod-leading biphasic pulse was used with as short as possible pulse width and inter phase gap for the efficacy of neural firing, stable threshold and preventing neural degeneration. Around C-level was stimulated to apical, middle and basal turn of cochlea. Artifact was eliminated by forward-masking, template-subtraction technique. For clearer waveform, we need to change distance between stimulating and recording electrode, the gain of amplification, number of average.