Low-cost modular acquisition and stimulation system for neuroscience

This is a complete acquisition and stimulation system for timestamp-driven neuroscience and neuroethology experiments. This system captures the instant of occurrence of spikes and sends them to a computer through a USB JTAG-UART interface. The computer also enqueues stimuli samples to be converted by an DAC synchronously to the first acquisition channel.

The system is physically composed by the following components:

• Altera MAX II CPLD (e.g. EPM2210)
• Digital buffer for input protection (e.g. 74HC4050)
• MAX5134 DAC
• 32K x 8-bit SRAM (e.g. IDT71256)

More information is available in our paper.

Compiling and synthesizing

Preparing

Edit config.mk and check if the Quartus II and Bluespec compiler paths are correct. You may also pass these paths as environment variables.

Compiling the software

cd software && make

Synthesizing one of the designs

cd src/dynamic-arb && make

or

cd src/static-arb && make

Citing

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-16214-0_29 (Preprint)

Matias, Paulo, Rafael T. Guariento, Lirio OB de Almeida, and Jan FW Slaets. "Modular Acquisition and Stimulation System for Timestamp-Driven Neuroscience Experiments." In Applied Reconfigurable Computing, pp. 339-348. Springer International Publishing, 2015.