NHP wireless recording facilities

For many years, our laboratory has systematically employed wireless technologies to record neural activity in non-human primates, with the goal of combining ecological validity of behaviour, data quality, and animal welfare. The infrastructure has been designed to allow acquisitions under naturalistic conditions, both in the animals’ home cages and in dedicated laboratory environments, so as to observe the species-specific behavioural repertoire without introducing unnecessary experimental constraints.

The animal facility is organised as a system of interconnected cages, in compliance with Directive 2010/63/EU and Italian Legislative Decree 26/2014, with animals housed in pairs or small groups in spaces that are larger than the legal minimum. Large windows provide natural light and physiological day-night cycles, while environmental control systems and continuous veterinary monitoring ensure stable and constantly supervised conditions.

The cages in the animal facility and in the laboratory are equipped with physical-structural enrichment (climbing elements, ropes, suspended toys), sensory enrichment (visual and auditory stimuli), food-based enrichment (substrates and devices for the dispersion of seeds and small food items), cognitive–occupational enrichment (puzzles and problem-solving tasks), and social enrichment (housing in pairs or in small groups when appropriate). This architecture makes it possible to record during both spontaneous activity and structured tasks, while maintaining continuity with the animals’ everyday environment and routines.

Preparation for recording sessions relies exclusively on positive reinforcement and voluntary cooperation. Animals gradually learn to approach, enter, and remain in the primate chair or in a plexiglass transport box for the short time needed to connect the recording system, without the use of head-fixation devices or any other permanent hardware. When minimal stabilisation is required to connect the wireless recording system, we employ external, temporary supports only.

In this context, neuro-surgical planning becomes crucial: thanks to a neuronavigation system with subject-specific models (based on MRI and CT images), we can define optimal trajectories and perform precise and reproducible implants.

Recordings combine multichannel electrodes with a broad range of non-invasive behavioural instrumentation. The neural signal is synchronised with multi-camera/IR video, allowing us to reconstruct with precision both the kinematics of movement and the neural dynamics during natural actions such as reach-to-grasp, exploration, locomotion, and social interactions. Careful attention to signal quality, lighting stability, and tracking-system calibration results in rich, comparable, and reproducible datasets over time.