Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

An event-related potential (ERP) is a brain response associated with a stimulus, memory, attention, or a motor act. ERPs can be measured relatively easily by using electroencephalography (EEG), a method that measures electrical activity of the brain through the skull and scalp. ERPs are obtained by averaging the ongoing EEG activity of hundreds of trials so that random brain activity is averaged out and the relevant brain activity remains. ERPs have been used for several decades and numerous articles have appeared in Nature, Science, Neuron and other leading journals. Surprisingly, the neural processes that underlie the various ERP components are still poorly understood. A major obstacle has been our inability to record the activity of single nerve cells in the brain together with the ERPs on the scalp. To address this problem, we have developed a nonhuman primate model to fully understand the relationship between single neuron activity and ERPs. Here, we are requesting an electrophysiological recording system that will allow us to record the activity of single nerve cells in multiple brain areas together with high-density ERPs. The experiments that are possible with this recording system will advance our understanding of the neural origin of various ERP components.