Reconstruction of field excitatory post-synaptic potentials in the dentate gyrus from amperometric biosensor signals

A new feasible and reproducible method to reconstruct local field potentials from amperometric biosensor signals is presented. It is based on the least-square fit of the current response of the biosensor electrode to a voltage step by the use of two time constants. After determination of the electrode impedance, Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Inverse FFT are performed to convert the recorded amperometric signals into voltage and trace the local field potentials using a resistor-capacitor circuit-based model. We applied this method to reconstruct field evoked potentials from currents recorded by a lactate biosensor in the rat dentate gyrus after stimulation of the perforant pathway in vivo. Initial slope of the reconstructed field excitatory postsynaptic potentials was used in order to demonstrate long term potentiation induced by high frequency stimulation of the perforant path. Our results show that reconstructing evoked potentials from amperometric recordings is a reliable method to obtain in vivo electrophysiological and amperometric information simultaneously from the same electrode in order to understand how chemical compounds vary with and modulate the dynamics of brain activity.