Electrical stimulation

Battery powered constant current or constant voltage stimulators

Brief pulses of electricity are used in various biomedical research applications as a stimulus to excite nerve or muscle fibers.  In EP research, electrical stimulation is commonly used to elicit somatosensory evoked potentials.  Several factors need to be considered to choose the right stimulator for your application.

• In order to minimize artifacts introduced into electrophysiological data, it is desirable that the stimulator should be electrically isolated both from ground and from the trigger device.
• The voltage required to send current through tissues can vary greatly, making it important to have control over the stimulus driving force.
• Large impedance variations during an experiment can result in loss of the stimulus. In this event, a constant current stimulator may be more suitable.

Both of the stimulators we offer meet these important criteria.  Review the differences highlighted below to choose the stimulator that best meets your experimental needs.

DS3 - Constant Current DS3 provides constant current stimulation with accurate and reproducible stimulus characteristics, switchable polarity, variable output and duration ranges (20µs to 2s), an external pulse duration control through the BNC trigger input and a single-shot button, which operates irrespective of trigger inputs. The case is manufactured from insulating material, and power is provided by standard batteries. Current is only drawn during pulse delivery.

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DS2A - Constant Voltage DS2A provides constant voltage stimulation with accurate and reproducible stimulus characteristics, switchable polarity, variable output and duration ranges (20µs to 2s), an external pulse duration control through the BNC trigger input and a single-shot button, which operates irrespective of trigger inputs.  The case is manufactured from insulating material, and power is provided by standard batteries.  Current is only drawn during pulse delivery.

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DS4 - Computer Controlled The DS4 takes an analogue voltage waveform from a sound card or digital-to-analog converter and converts it into an isolated constant current stimulus. The DS4 will accept several input voltage ranges and produces four output ranges (±10µA, ±100µA, ±1mA and ±10mA). It also features a GATE input, so that several DS4 units can be controlled by a single analogue waveform, but enabled individually via this GATE input.

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