Toward true closed-loop neuromodulation: artifact-free recording during stimulation

Closed-loop and responsive neuromodulation systems improve open-loop neurostimulation by responding directly to measured neural activity and providing adaptive, on-demand therapy. To be effective, these systems must be able to simultaneously record and stimulate neural activity, a task made difficult by persistent stimulation artifacts that distort and obscure underlying biomarkers. To enable simultaneous stimulation and recording, several techniques have been proposed. These techniques involve artifact-preventing system configurations, resilient recording front-ends, and back-end signal processing for removing recorded artifacts. Co-designing and integrating these artifact cancellation techniques will be key to enabling neuromodulation systems to stimulate and record at the same time. Here, we review the state-of-the-art for these techniques and their role in achieving artifact-free neuromodulation.