A Laser Diode-Based Wireless Optogenetic Headstage

Abstract

A power efficient, battery powered optogenetic headstage for doing in-vivo experiments with freely moving genetically modified animals is presented. The proposed system is designed with commercial off-the-shelf components, and is based on a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) System-on-Chip (SoC) with an integrated antenna and a programmable ARM Cortex-M3 microprocessor core able to control the circuit. The optical signal is generated using a compact laser diode (LD) suitable for a wearable headstage. LD produces light in a highly concentrated way considerably improving the LD-optical fiber coupling efficiency. The proposed optogenetic system is shown to provide 120 mW/mm 2 at the fiber tip with a current consumption of 60mA, considerably lower than LED-based systems. The system is remotely controlled by a smartphone app where the user can define optical stimulations patterns settings (optical power, frequency, duty cycle, etc.). It is also powerful enough to be ready to house additional optogenetics functionalities, like electrochemical sensing of the cell response, without significant modifications, thus being the basis of an integrated optogenetic platform.

Development of a Smart Wireless Multisensor Platform for an Optogenetic Brain Implant

“…The performance for the optical stimulator circuit has been studied in detail in a previous iteration by using a specially built testing card based on the Anaren (East Syracuse, NY, USA) A20737 BLE SoC [ 38 ]. In this work, the optical stimulator is coupled to the potentiostat module, as described further, with the purpose of performing optogenetic stimulation experiments with dopamine detection.…”

A Wireless Electro-Optic Platform for Multimodal Electrophysiology and Optogenetics in Freely Moving Rodents

“…Optogenetics allows the control of specific genetically modified neurons by light, which improves neural stimulation selectivity and avoids interference with parallel electrophysiological recordings compared to electrical stimulation. Small wireless implantable platforms combining both optogenetic stimulation with electrophysiological recording capability have been designed to study the brain dynamics in small laboratory animals (Gagnon-Turcotte et al, 2017a , 2020 ; Mesri et al, 2018 ; Bilodeau et al, 2020 ). However, performing high-resolution electrophysiology recordings and optical stimulation in small freely moving animal without interfering with their natural behavior remains challenging (Buzsáki et al, 2015 ).…”

Sistemas Optoelectrónicos para Terapias Fototérmicas Dirigidas al Cáncer de Piel y Optogenética en la Regeneración de Tejido Nervioso

“…Estos se pueden aplicar directamente o llevar el haz mediante una fibra óptica, por lo que, gracias a su pequeño tamaño y la gran precisión que se logra sobre el tejido objetivo, se suelen usar en dispositivos implantables. Mientras que con un láser se pueden lograr irradiancias de hasta 1 W/cm 2 , superando por mucho a los dispositivos LED, esto se da gracias a la concentración de la potencia radiada en un área reducida, y requiere de dispositivos ópticos de alto coste para la colimación y la correcta distribución del haz (Mesri et al, 2018;Fan and Li, 2015).…”