TY - JOUR T1 - “Validating silicon polytrodes with paired juxtacellular recordings: method and dataset” JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/037937 SP - 037937 AU - Joana P. Neto AU - Gonçalo Lopes AU - João Frazão AU - Joana Nogueira AU - Pedro Lacerda AU - Pedro Baião AU - Arno Aarts AU - Alexandru Andrei AU - Silke Musa AU - Elvira Fortunato AU - Pedro Barquinha AU - Adam R. Kampff Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/02/02/037937.abstract N2 - Cross-validating new methods for recording neural activity is necessary to accurately interpret and compare the signals they measure. Here we describe a procedure for precisely aligning two probes for in vivo “paired-recordings” such that the spiking activity of a single neuron is monitored with both a dense extracellular silicon polytrode and a juxtacellular micro-pipette. Our new method allows for efficient, reliable, and automated guidance of both probes to the same neural structure with micron resolution. We also describe a new dataset of paired-recordings, which is available online. We propose that our novel targeting system, and ever expanding cross-validation dataset, will be vital to the development of new algorithms for automatically detecting/sorting single-units, characterizing new electrode materials/designs, and resolving nagging questions regarding the origin and nature of extracellular neural signals. ER -