• Leon F Heffer and James B Fallon.
• Department of Otolaryngology, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. l.heffer@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au
• J. Neurosci. Methods. 2008 May 30; 170 (2): 277-84.

AbstractElectrical stimulus artifact corrupting electrophysiological recordings often makes the subsequent analysis of the underlying neural response difficult. This is particularly evident when investigating short-latency neural activity in response to high-rate electrical stimulation. We developed and evaluated an off-line technique for the removal of stimulus artifact from electrophysiological recordings. Pulsatile electrical stimulation was presented at rates of up to 5000 pulses/s during extracellular recordings of guinea pig auditory nerve fibers. Stimulus artifact was removed by replacing the sample points at each stimulus artifact event with values interpolated along a straight line, computed from neighbouring sample points. This technique required only that artifact events be identifiable and that the artifact duration remained less than both the inter-stimulus interval and the time course of the action potential. We have demonstrated that this computationally efficient sample-and-interpolate technique removes the stimulus artifact with minimal distortion of the action potential waveform. We suggest that this technique may have potential applications in a range of electrophysiological recording systems.

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