A Fast, Accurate and Cloud-based Data Processing Pipeline for High-Density, High-Site-Count Electrophysiology

在过去的十年里，神经科学家在可用的工具方面取得了重大进展， 越来越具体的问题，关于哪些神经元和电路是相关的，必要的， 对于特定的行为或计算功能来说是足够的。我们对神经系统的理解 计算以及它如何导致复杂的行为严重依赖于协调的精确测量。 行为动物的神经活动。在过去几年中，作出了重大协调努力， 通过增加站点密度、扩展空间覆盖范围、提供高保真度， 记录并与细胞类型特异性刺激工具整合。细胞外记录表现出行动 电位（尖峰），需要尖峰分选分析，以正确检测并将其分配给单个神经元。 由于细胞外基质的广泛可及性， 记录技术和增加的要求，以记录和分离活动，从尽可能多的神经元， 可能神经科学的基本发现，如方向选择细胞、位置细胞和网格细胞 如果没有可靠的细胞外信号的尖峰分选是不可能的。这些发现 阐明了信息处理和认知能力的细胞基础。最近，细胞外记录 装置也已用于通过修复术恢复运动功能。然而，由于 这些治疗所需的电极增加以允许更精细的电机控制 分析.随着自动化尖峰分选能力的提高，该领域在这些领域的进展将是 加快现有的尖峰分析解决方案缺乏可扩展性，并且通常被设计为锁定一个尖峰。 用户到一个特定的硬件平台。社区需要一个集成的开源分析平台， 随着细胞外电极容量的增加以及新的和未经验证的 尖峰分选方法。JRCLUST，我们的免费，开源，独立的尖峰排序软件，提供了一个可扩展的， 自动化且经过充分验证的加标分选工作流程，可耐受实验记录条件， 噪声、探针漂移和来自行为动物的运动伪影。它可以使用一个集合来处理各种数据集， 预先优化的参数使其在社区中广泛使用。此外，我们的处理速度和 模块化方法允许快速循环创新和实用的途径来解释长记录， 数以百计的记录网站。由于其实时性能和准确的自动化分析， JRCLUST是一个单一的工作站，自成立以来，在全球20多个实验室中迅速采用， 一年前。该项目的成功完成将使Vidrio能够支持、扩展和维护JRCLUST 从而使研究人员能够阐明功能上定义的神经元亚群如何介导特异性 信息处理功能在行为的关键时刻，在健康的动物和动物模型， 神经系统疾病。

The past decade has seen major advances in the tools available to neuroscientists, making it possible to ask increasingly specific questions regarding which neurons and circuits are correlated with, necessary for, and sufficient for, specific behavioral or computational functions. Advancements in our understanding of neural computation and how it leads to complex behavior critically depend on accurate measurements of coordinated neural activities in behaving animals. In the past several years there have been major coordinated efforts to advance neural probe technology by increasing site density, extending spatial coverage, providing high fidelity recording, and integrating with cell-type specific stimulation tools. Extracellular recordings exhibit action potentials (spikes) that require spike-sorting analysis to correctly detect and assign them to individual neurons. The demand for accurate and scalable spike sorting has increased due to the wide accessibility of extracellular recording technology and the increased requirements to record and separate activity from as many neurons as possible. Fundamental discoveries in neuroscience such as orientation-selective cells, place cells, and grid cells would not have been possible without reliable spike sorting of extracellular signals. These discoveries have illuminated the cellular basis of information processing and cognitive abilities. Recently, extracellular recording devices have also been applied to restoring motor function through prosthetics. However, as the number of electrodes needed for these treatments increases to allow for finer motor control so does the need for automated analysis. With more capacity for automated spike sorting the field’s progress in these domains would be accelerated. Existing spike analysis solutions suffer from a lack of scalability and are often designed to lock a user into a specific hardware platform. The community’s need for an integrated open-source analysis platform is rapidly growing with the increasing capacity of extracellular electrodes and the number of new and un-validated spike-sorting methods. JRCLUST, our free, open-source, standalone spike sorting software, offers a scalable, automated and well-validated spike sorting workflow that can tolerate experimental recording conditions with noise, probe drift, and motion artifacts from behaving animals. It can handle a wide range of datasets using a set of pre-optimized parameters making it practical for wide use in the community. Also, our processing speed and modular approach allows for rapid cycle innovation and practical pathways to interpret long recordings from hundreds of recording sites. Thanks to its real-time performance and accurate automated analysis requiring only a single workstation, JRCLUST has been rapidly adopted in 20+ labs worldwide since its inception less than a year ago. Successful completion of this project will enable Vidrio to support, expand and maintain JRCLUST thus empowering researchers to elucidate how functionally defined subpopulations of neurons mediate specific information-processing functions at key moments during behavior, in healthy animals and in animal models of neurological diseases.