[Summer’16 Internship] The Dragonfly: Connecting the laser to the Spikerbox

From previous neural recordings, I have data of the spikes of the TSDNs. However, I had yet to find a way to record the onset of the stimulus (turning on the laser) so that I could correlate it to the spikes. In order to both simultaneously record the event of the laser turning on and the neural recording of the daringly TSDN, I exchanged my neuron Spikerbox for a Muscle Spikerbox Pro, which allows me two channels (later I would find that I didn’t even need the second).

Basic schematic for how this will be accomplished:

This allows me to simultaneously record whether the laser is on and record from the neuron of the dragonfly.

Here are some more pictures of how I accomplished this:

Below is a video of the final result:

The red lines on the laptop screen represent the laser turning on. I do not yet have an event marking the laser turning off– maybe that’s the next step! Also, the white recording on the laptop screen is the recording from the electrodes (which will be recording from the dragonfly neuron).

By Patricia Aguilar