Bridging circuit modeling and signal analysis to understand the risk of crosstalk contamination in brain recordings
Journal article, 2026
Advancements in the field of implantable neurotechnologies have enabled the integration of hundreds of microelectrodes on ultra-thin and flexible substrates. Besides implantable components, also connectors, headstages and cables have to comply with the high-count demand, resulting in a complex and compact chain with reduced line spacing and smaller safety margins. Here, we show that epicortical recordings acquired from anesthetized rat brains with a state-of-art neural acquisition system are undoubtedly compromised by crosstalk, with signal coherence maps exhibiting a strong dependency to the routing layout. A crosstalk back-correction algorithm is developed, allowing to infer on how signals would look like under a zero-crosstalk scenario. We found that signal coherence between closely routed channels effectively drops after correction, corroborating crosstalk contamination. Our work stresses the importance of validating recorded data against the routing layout as a crucial step of data quality control, helping to come closer to ground truth data.
Author
Maria Porto Cruz
University of Freiburg
University of Ferrara
Elena Zucchini
University of Ferrara
Maria Vomero
University of Freiburg
Aldo Pastore
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
University of Ferrara
Ioana G. Vasilaș
University of Freiburg
Emanuela Delfino
University of Ferrara
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Michele Di Lauro
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Maria Asplund
Chalmers, Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Electronics Material and Systems
Luciano Fadiga
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
University of Ferrara
Thomas Stieglitz
University of Freiburg
Nature Communications
2041-1723 (ISSN) 20411723 (eISSN)
Vol. 16 1 4744Subject Categories (SSIF 2025)
Other Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering
Computer Sciences
DOI
10.1038/s41467-025-59391-0
Related datasets
Supplementary informatin [dataset]
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59391-0