Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica

A new electrophysiological instrument that uses a digital signal processor to measure and control the electrical activities of nerve and muscle cells has been developed. The history of modern neuroscience can be traced back to about 60 years ago; in a landmark study of the squid giant axon, Hodgkin and Huxley used an instrument called voltage clamp for measuring ionic currents. Today, neuroscientists all over the world still use the conventional instruments based analog feedback controls. This innovation, called Universal Clamp, employs a high-speed digital signal processor capable of performing multiple functions including voltage clamp, current clamp, dynamic clamp, and patch clamp, simply by switching the software in a single integrated system. The technology is in the process of being commercialized. This talk includes a brief overview of the conventional electrophysiological instrumentation. The concept and design of this instrument are presented, followed by the preliminary results with live neurons of the pond snail (Lymnaea stagnalis). Future work includes the measurement of cellular capacitance changes that can be related to surface area fluctuations due to exocytosis or endocytosis.

Ying Sun received the BS degree from the National Taiwan University in 1978 and the PhD degree from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1985. Although all his degrees are in Electrical Engineering, he has always been interested in the field of Biomedical Engineering. In 1985 he joined the faculty of the University of Rhode Island, where he is now a full professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering and the Director of the Biomedical Engineering Program. His research areas include medical devices, biomedical signal processing, medical imaging systems, modeling of physiological systems, neuroengineering, and assistive technology for persons with disabilities. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, hospitals, and medical device industry. His research results have been published in over 200 papers in professional journals and conferences. He is the co-inventors of four issued and several pending patents. He has served as a consultant to medical device industry and has written several professional software packages for cardiovascular research and medical imaging. He visited Linköping University (Sweden) in 1992 and University of Vienna (Austria) in 1993. He has been a short-term Visiting Professor at the National Sun Yat-Sen University (Taiwan) from 2010 to 2013.