Plexon offers a powerful LED based optogenetic stimulation system that provides stable light output, outstanding temporal precision, and fewer safety concerns as compared to laser-based systems. The PlexBright® 4-channel optogenetic controller PlexBright® 4-channel optogenetic controller or the 1-channel driver can be used to drive and control the LEDS used for optogenetic stimulation.

Although Plexon’s optogenetic system is LED based, a customer recently contacted us to ask about controlling lasers with the 4-channel controller. The 4-channel controller was designed to operate both LEDs and lasers. In Laser mode the controller can output voltages from 0 – 5V for modulating the output of a laser or other device.

However, this customer was specifically interested in using the 4-channel controller and the included software, Radiant, to generate sine waves. The reasoning for generating sine waves was supported by a recent publication showing that avoidance behavior was increased when 8-Hz stimulation was delivered in an oscillatory manner, while pulsed stimulation did not alter the time in the open arms of the elevated plus maze (Padilla-Coreano et al., 2019.).

Radiant’s pattern generation functionality allows researchers to quickly define simple to complex output patterns that may be saved and played back repeatedly. Arbitrary stimulation patterns can also be loaded from user defined text files, or the outputs can be controlled directly by the user in manual mode. The flexibility to create user defined text files allowed this researcher to create the pattern needed for this experimental design.

Several example arbitrary waveform files are included with the 4-channel controller and are installed along with the Radiant software. These files were designed to illustrate how to use arbitrary waveform files and some of the things you can accomplish using arbitrary waveform files. Please contact Plexon if you are interested in the 4-channel controller or if you have questions about defining custom patterns.