The Regents of the University of Minnesota received a three-year, $3.73 million Project Grant from the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to develop a cranial exoskeleton and pixel-drive system for brain-wide neural recordings and comprehensive behavioral monitoring in freely behaving mice. The grant supports an interdisciplinary team to engineer a six degree-of-freedom cranial exoskeleton capable of manipulating a one-kilogram head stage docked to a freely moving mouse. The exoskeleton will incorporate force sensors and closed-loop control to enable manipulation of sophisticated neural recording hardware weighing significantly more than the mouse itself. The team will also design a compatible pixel-drive head stage incorporating force sensing, neural probe manipulation capabilities, and behavioral tracking cameras. The system aims to record from thousands of contacts distributed throughout the brain to significantly enhance the breadth and complexity of behaviors that can be studied using high-performance, large-scale neural recording and tracking devices. The award period is May 1, 2022 to April 30, 2025.
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