Prototype of the Device to Estimate Neurotransmitters’ Concentration by Cyclic Voltammetry Method

This paper presents the wireless device for recording changes in the concentration of neurotransmitters by cyclic voltammetry. Research in the field of higher nervous activity is an important and urgent task and the difference is that it is mainly based on experimental data. This device is necessary for conducting scientific research of processes in the brain, in conditions when the experimental animal moves freely during the experiment. The article suggests a variant of the structure of such a device with justification of the requirements for its modules. This article contains the block diagrams of device and the results obtained during an experiment using a prototype. The created prototype is designed to check the correctness of the operation of the measuring part of the device itself and its dimensions are larger than required, however, experiments have shown that this device is suitable for performing correct measurements and, in case of minimization, can be used for conducting experiments on animals. Authors give the block diagrams of device and the characteristics obtained as a result of prototyping. Based on the experiments, a conclusion was made about the possibility of using such a device in research on experimental animals.

I. Introduction

The investigations of higher nervous activity are based on experimental data that increases the relevance of the tasks of developing techniques and devices designed to conduct such experiments. Due to the fact that small experimental animals are often involved in experiments [1] the requirements for miniaturization and autonomy of devices increase, particularly the ability to work the time required for a correct experiment without wires, as well as to reduce the weight of devices for fixing it on an animal directly. As for the task of estimate the changes of neurotransmitters’ concentration in experimental animal’s brain (rat) the authors of paper [2] proposed the device, solving this task by cyclic voltammetry, but some of its realization aspects were criticized, and we provide the alternative version of device, described in this paper. The developed device at the prototype level was tested for measuring the concentration, near to real brain conditions, and it showed correct estimates of the concentrations of dopamine in the fluid.