Spikes on a Plane!

Flying back from a successful trip from California, Tim and Greg of Backyard had decided there was time for one more experiment…

Thanks to the kind TSA folks at the San Francisco International Airport and Delta airlines, we were able to record spikes in flight. Quite possibly the first neurons ever recorded on a commercial airline!

With the exception of one dissenting voice, the passengers on board were a great audience.  By coincidence, the person sitting in the seat next to Tim and Greg was a neuroscientist from Britain!  He helped design our working hypothesis for the experiment:  spikes will fire less with decreased O2 pressure in the cabin.  Here are some of the photos from the historic flight.

The stow-aways take in the scenery of California from 37,000 feet.

Remember when doing surgery, to keep the operating room well lit.

Our flight attendant was gracious enough to loan us anaesthesia in the form of a cup of ice and a Coke Zero (and a bag a peanuts).

Fellow passengers were given a science lesson while roaming the fuselage or waiting for the restrooms

While we failed to determine if decreased air pressure changed the spiking rate of insects, we determined that the overall experiment was a big success!

Posted: 2010-Mar-30 — Filed under: Outreach — Tags: Delta, Demo, SpikerBox

SpikerBox v3 Prototype Complete!

You spoke; we listened. Version 3 of the SpikerBox is complete and fully operational. New features include: built-in Speaker, Gain Control, rapid switching between audio and recording mode, and three standard outputs: BNC, mini-stereo, and RCA. We have a couple more improvements (smaller size, smaller batteries, etc) to make, but stayed tuned. We foresee Version 4 being the market-ready version. Thanks for your patience everyone!

What did the previous versions look like? See SpikerBox1 and SpikerBox2.

Posted: 2009-Jul-15 — Filed under: Hardware, Marketing — Tags: SpikerBox