Optrode/Hybrid Package
Hardware
A Hybrid-packaged probe carrying an optical fibre — the flexible ribbon that keeps tether force off the shank, combined with light delivery at the recording site.
Two things routed to the head
The Hybrid package exists to absorb tether force in a flexible polyimide ribbon instead of the implanted shank, which is what makes a chronic freely-moving recording hold. Adding an optical fibre means a second flexible run to the same implant.
Both have to be anchored, and they have to be anchored so that neither transmits force to the other. That is the handling cost of the combination, and it is the part that decides whether the implant survives the cohort.
Catalog builds run 32 and 64 channels, low-profile, in UV epoxy (OG116-31).
The shared constraint
Every optrode package puts a light path and a recording path on one implant. Two things follow, and they are true of all of them:
- The fibre adds cross-section. Whatever the probe displaced on its own, it displaces more with a fibre alongside — along the whole trajectory, not just at the tip.
- Light reaches the electrodes too. A photoelectric artifact at stimulus onset is a property of the geometry, not a fault; plan the analysis window around it rather than discovering it in the data.