Fast Stimulus Artifact Recovery in a Multichannel Neural Recording System

We describe a 32-channel recording system and software artifact blanking technique for recording neuronal responses to high-rate electrical stimulation. Each recording channel recovers from biphasic full-scale-input pulses (1.5-V) in less than 80 micros. Artifacts are blanked online in software, allowing flexibility in the choice of blanking period and the possibility of recovering neural data occurring simultaneously with non-saturating artifacts. The system has been used in-vivo to record central neuronal responses to intracochlear electrical stimulation at 2000 pulses per second. Simplicity of the hardware design makes the technique well suited to an implantable multi-channel recording system.