This paper presents a dynamic front-end towards achieving unsupervised single-neuron activity monitoring. By implementing at the front-end, an automatic gain control that is optimised for neural signal dynamics, subsequent processing can be achieved without the need for calibration. The system uses three amplification stages (low-noise first stage, variable-gain second stage and high-gain third stage), a tuneable high-pass filter, and a feedback loop to tune the variable gain. The circuit has been implemented in a commercially-available 0.18um CMOS technology with total power consumption between 1.79 and 1.95$uW$ The front-end achieves a variable gain from 52 to 86.4dB with 3kHz bandwidth and a high-pass filter that is tuneable from 100-300Hz. The input referred noise is 9.66uV with a total harmonic distortion of under 1%.