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The first generation of Neuropixels probes was announced in 2017 and is available at cost price.
The first generation of Neuropixels probes (single shank, ~1,000 recording sites) were developed through a collaboration headed by Tim Harris at HHMI Janelia Research Campus, and the electrodes are designed and fabricated by imec, the nanoelectronics research center.
To test them during development and guide further refinements, Tim Harris teamed up with scientists at UCL and Allen Institute for Brain Science. The results of the work were published in 2017 (Jun, Steinmetz, Siegle, Denman, Bauza et al, Nature 2017).
The results dramatically increase the number of neurons that can be routinely recorded simultaneously. For instance, two Neuropixels probes can record simultaneously from over 500 neurons in 5 regions of the mouse brain (Jun, Steinmetz, Siegle, Denman, Bauza et al, Nature 2017). (These data are publicly available).
The UCL team included Principal Investigators John O'Keefe, Kenneth Harris, and Matteo Carandini, and postdocs Nicholas Steinmetz, Marius Bauza, and Marius Pachitariu.
This work was made possible by a Strategic Award from the Wellcome Trust and by funds from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the Allen Institute, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
The probes are available at cost price at www.neuropixels.org.