Recording from Cricket Cercal Ganglia

Does the SpikerBox work on anything other than a cockroach leg? Yes, you can record from any invertebrate central nervous system but you often need a manipulator to accurately position your electrode. One of our users, Professor Walton Jones at the KAIST University in South Korea, recently experimented on the cricket cercel system. To those of you stuck in the mammal world (we were there too, we understand), the cerci are sensory organs on the rear of crickets and other insects (including cockroaches).

The cercal system is sensitive to vibration (wind, sound) and is a classical favorite of invertebrate physiologists; the anatomy of the sensory neurons’ projections to the terminal abdominal ganglion are well understood.

But can we record from the neural fibers of the cercal system with only the SpikerBox? If you place one electrode needle at the base of the cercus, and one electrode needle in the body as ground, like this:

and touch or blow on the cerci, you get a response like this (below is mp3,wav file can be downloaded here]:

[audio:https://backyardbrains.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Walton_Cricket_Cerci.mp3|titles=Cricket Cercal Response]

Thanks for sharing the data Walton!