A Closed-Loop Electrophysiological Hardware Prototype to Estimate and Control Neuronal States.

Neurons are considered to be the most basic structural and functional units of the nervous system. The functions of brain are closely related to the firing activity of neurons. However, a large number repetitive experiments are required to explore the target-related nerve system response in traditional electrophysiological experiments. The application of the "closed-loop" paradigm to electrophysiological experiments can obtain the desired stimulation signal easily, but the physiological experimental environment is harsh and there are ethical problems. Model based simulation on the software platform can break through the above limitations, but it is difficult to reproduce the analog signals acquisition and estimation of physiological experiment. Therefore, this paper proposed a closed-loop electrophysiology hardware prototype (CLEHP), which capable of realizing real time simulation of neuroelectrophysiological experiments. The Hodgkin-Huxley model and unscented Kalman filter is implemented on the CLEHP, and the results show that the CLEHP is able to generate neuronal electrophysiological activity accurately and to estimate and control the state of neurons in real time. More models and algorithms can be implemented on platform that based on CLEHP, which may promote the research on neural mechanisms and neural closed-loop therapy.