Where the Magic Happened

Yesterday Mark and I biked around the University of Utah campus. Ann Arbor's campus is incredibly bland by comparison. The biking was hard with many hills (with the altitude to boot), but the views spectacular.On this trip to the University of Utah, we visited Mark's old PhD lab: Dick Normann's Neural Engineering Lab. The lab is famous for inventing the "Utah Array," which along with the "Michigan Probes," is considered the forefront of electrode design. 

The Utah array is being implanted in humans right now for Neuroprosthetic work (CyberKinetics) and for Epilepsy research (Bradley Gregor). So, I wanted to see where the magic happened and the machine where the first 100-channel Utah Array was made. And here it is, the magnificent silicon dicing saw that made the first prototype:

But if you have 100-channels, how do you interface with the electrode itself? The first actual recordings with the electrode were done with homemade switch-board amplifier, in which you could access any 16 of the 100 channels. Notice the 100 pin holes on the left, and the column of 16 holes on the right. You would simply use cables like an old-fashioned telephone operator. In 50 years this equipment may be in a museum somewhere like the old ENIACS and PDPs in the computer science buildings. Right now the switchboard just sits in an cabinet in a corner of the surgery room along with other ancient equipment no one uses anymore.