Plexon Inc. today announced that East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai has equipped its new Shanghai Institute of Brain Functional Genomics with four of Plexon's Multichannel Acquisition Processor (MAP) Systems for neural signal acquisition and analysis research on Alzheimer's disease.

ECNU marks Plexon's first product sale in China and the company plans to continue expanding marketing efforts in the country. The use of Plexon's MAP System allows for the acquisition of neural data, which enables ECNU to further research on the function of genes and their dynamic interactions at the molecular, physiological and behavioral levels and to discover the gene mutation responsible for the early onset of Alzheimer's disease.

The MAP System is a large-scale data acquisition hardware system that allows neuroscientists to record and process high-frequency brain signals ("spikes") from individual neurons, as well as lower-frequency analog signals. The system's software also provides real-time, three-dimensional display of neuronal activity, which can be used to visualize and analyze the data.