Twister3: a simple and fast microwire twister
© 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd. Objective. Twisted wire probes (TWPs, e.g. stereotrodes and tetrodes) provide a cheap and reliable method for obtaining high quality, multiple single-unit neural recordings in freely moving animals. Despite their ubiquity, TWPs are constructed using a tedious procedure con...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IOP Publishing
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/136314 |
| _version_ | 1826217807908438016 |
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| author | Newman, Jonathan P Voigts, Jakob Borius, Maxim Karlsson, Mattias Harnett, Mark T Wilson, Matthew A |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Newman, Jonathan P Voigts, Jakob Borius, Maxim Karlsson, Mattias Harnett, Mark T Wilson, Matthew A |
| author_sort | Newman, Jonathan P |
| collection | MIT |
| description | © 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd. Objective. Twisted wire probes (TWPs, e.g. stereotrodes and tetrodes) provide a cheap and reliable method for obtaining high quality, multiple single-unit neural recordings in freely moving animals. Despite their ubiquity, TWPs are constructed using a tedious procedure consisting of manually folding, turning, and fusing microwire. This imposes a significant labor burden on research personnel who use TWPs in their experiments. Approach. To address this issue, we created Twister3, an open-source microwire twisting machine. This machine features a quick-draw wire feeder that eliminates manual wire folding, an auto-aligning motor attachment mechanism which results in consistently straight probes, and a high speed motor for rapid probe turning. Main results. Twister3 greatly increases the speed and repeatability of constructing twisted microwire probes compared to existing options. Users with less than one hour of experience using the device were able to make ∼70 tetrodes per hour, on average. It is cheap, well documented, and all associated designs and source code are open-source. Significance. Twister3 significantly reduces the labor burden of creating high-quality TWPs so electrophysiologists can spend more of their time performing recordings rather than making probes. Therefore, this device is of interest to any lab performing TWP neural recordings, for example, using microdrives. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T17:09:12Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/136314 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T17:09:12Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1363142023-01-20T20:26:10Z Twister3: a simple and fast microwire twister Newman, Jonathan P Voigts, Jakob Borius, Maxim Karlsson, Mattias Harnett, Mark T Wilson, Matthew A Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Picower Institute for Learning and Memory McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT © 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd. Objective. Twisted wire probes (TWPs, e.g. stereotrodes and tetrodes) provide a cheap and reliable method for obtaining high quality, multiple single-unit neural recordings in freely moving animals. Despite their ubiquity, TWPs are constructed using a tedious procedure consisting of manually folding, turning, and fusing microwire. This imposes a significant labor burden on research personnel who use TWPs in their experiments. Approach. To address this issue, we created Twister3, an open-source microwire twisting machine. This machine features a quick-draw wire feeder that eliminates manual wire folding, an auto-aligning motor attachment mechanism which results in consistently straight probes, and a high speed motor for rapid probe turning. Main results. Twister3 greatly increases the speed and repeatability of constructing twisted microwire probes compared to existing options. Users with less than one hour of experience using the device were able to make ∼70 tetrodes per hour, on average. It is cheap, well documented, and all associated designs and source code are open-source. Significance. Twister3 significantly reduces the labor burden of creating high-quality TWPs so electrophysiologists can spend more of their time performing recordings rather than making probes. Therefore, this device is of interest to any lab performing TWP neural recordings, for example, using microdrives. 2021-10-27T20:34:51Z 2021-10-27T20:34:51Z 2020 2021-04-02T13:29:21Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/136314 en 10.1088/1741-2552/AB77FA Journal of Neural Engineering Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf IOP Publishing bioRxiv |
| spellingShingle | Newman, Jonathan P Voigts, Jakob Borius, Maxim Karlsson, Mattias Harnett, Mark T Wilson, Matthew A Twister3: a simple and fast microwire twister |
| title | Twister3: a simple and fast microwire twister |
| title_full | Twister3: a simple and fast microwire twister |
| title_fullStr | Twister3: a simple and fast microwire twister |
| title_full_unstemmed | Twister3: a simple and fast microwire twister |
| title_short | Twister3: a simple and fast microwire twister |
| title_sort | twister3 a simple and fast microwire twister |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/136314 |
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