a, Clinical DBS leads have four electrodes, each of which can be in either gray or white matter. ∂LFP records from two electrodes around the stimulation electrode. b, An in vitro model introduces differences in resistivity to test whether impedance mismatches in the two electrodes causes gain compression in amplifiers. c, Amplifier transfer function shows how inputs are transformed into outputs. Three models are simulated here. d, Time domain output from the different amplifier models demonstrate the effects of gain compression, both hard-clipping and soft-clipping. e, Schematic of the focused MC model consists of brain, lead, amplifier layers. f, Simulated ∂LFP is analysed with the same approaches used for empirical measurements.