A two-channel action-potential generator for testing neurophysiologic data acquisition/analysis systems.
A 2-channel action-potential generator system was designed for use in testing neurophysiologic data acquisition/analysis systems. The system consists of a personal computer controlling an external hardware unit. This system is capable of generating 2 channels of simulated action potential (AP) waveshapes. The AP waveforms are generated from the linear combination of 2 principal-component template functions. Each channel generates randomly occurring APs with a specified rate ranging from 1 to 200 events per second. The 2 trains may be independent of one another or the second channel may be made to be excited or inhibited by the events from the first channel with user-specified probabilities. A third internal channel may be made to excite or inhibit events in both of the 2 output channels with user-specified rate parameters and probabilities. The system produces voltage waveforms that may be used to test neurophysiologic data acquisition systems for recording from 2 spike trains simultaneously and for testing multispike-train analysis (e.g., cross-correlation) software.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, MA 02215-2407, USA.
R S
RS
Lisiecki
H F
HF
Voigt
D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000669:Amplifiers, Electronic; D004558:Electric Stimulation / Q000295:instrumentation*; D001330:Electronic Data Processing; D004594:Electrophysiology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012984:Software