An easy-to-assemble, robust, and lightweight drive implant for chronic tetrode recordings in freely moving animals

Tetrode arrays are a standard method for neuronal recordings in behaving animals, especially for chronic recordings of many neurons in freely-moving animals. Objective. We sought to simplify tetrode drive designs with the aim of enabling building and implanting a 16-tetrode drive in a single day. Approach. Our design makes use of recently developed technologies to reduce the complexity of the drive while maintaining a low weight. Main results. The design presents an improvement over existing implants in terms of robustness, weight, and ease of use. We describe two variants: a 16 tetrode implant weighing similar to 2 g for mice, bats, tree shrews and similar animals, and a 64 tetrode implant weighing similar to 16 g for rats and similar animals. These designs were co-developed and optimized alongside a new class of drive-mounted feature-rich amplifier boards with ultra-thin radio-frequency tethers, as described in an upcoming paper (Newman, Zhang et al in prep). Significance. This design significantly improves the data yield of chronic electrophysiology experiments.