Twister3: a simple and fast microwire twister

摘要

Objective. Twisted wire probes (TWPs, e.g. stereotrodes and tetrodes) provide a cheap and reliablemethod for obtaining high quality, multiple single-unit neural recordings in freely movinganimals. Despite their ubiquity, TWPs are constructed using a tedious procedure consisting ofmanually folding, turning, and fusing microwire. This imposes a significant labor burden onresearch personnel who use TWPs in their experiments. Approach. To address this issue, we createdTwister3, an open-source microwire twisting machine. This machine features a quick-draw wirefeeder that eliminates manual wire folding, an auto-aligning motor attachment mechanism whichresults in consistently straight probes, and a high speed motor for rapid probe turning. Mainresults. Twister3 greatly increases the speed and repeatability of constructing twisted microwireprobes compared to existing options. Users with less than one hour of experience using the devicewere able to make ~70 tetrodes per hour, on average. It is cheap, well documented, and allassociated designs and source code are open-source. Significance. Twister3 significantly reduces thelabor burden of creating high-quality TWPs so electrophysiologists can spend more of their timeperforming recordings rather than making probes. Therefore, this device is of interest to any labperforming TWP neural recordings, for example, using microdrives.