A fully implantable stimulator for use in small laboratory animals

This paper describes a low cost, fully implantable, single channel stimulator that can be manufactured in a research laboratory. The stimulator generates charge-balanced biphasic current pulses which are delivered to a bipolar electrode array for chronic stimulation of neural tissue in free-running laboratory animals such as rats and mice. The system is magnetically coupled and contains no batteries or external leadwires. The subject is placed in a chamber surrounded by three orthogonal coils of wire which are driven to generate a magnetic field. Currents are induced in wire coils in the implanted stimulator then regulated to produce biphasic current pulses with fixed amplitude of up to 500 μA. Phase duration is adjustable from 25 to 250 μs per phase. Charge balance is maintained by capacitive coupling and shorting of the electrodes between pulses. Stimulus rate can be continuously varied, and the temporal precision of the stimulus means that the stimulator can be used in behavioural experiments or for generating electrically evoked potentials. We describe the application of this stimulator for chronic electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve (i.e. a cochlear implant); however it will have application in other areas of neuroscience requiring controlled safe electrical stimulation of neural tissue over extended periods. Circuit diagrams and manufacturing details are provided as supplementary data.