A Low-cost Computational Approach to Analyze Spiking Activity in Cockroach Sensory Neurons

Overview

Journal Adv Physiol Educ

Publisher American Physiological Society

Specialties Medical Education
Physiology

Date 2021 Mar 4

PMID 33661048

Citations 2

Authors

David J Torres

Andres Romero

Wes Colgan 3rd

Ulises M Ricoy

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Undergraduates use a spike sorting routine developed in Octave to analyze the spiking activity generated from mechanical stimulation of spines of cockroach legs with the inexpensive SpikerBox amplifier and the free software Audacity. Students learn the procedures involved in handling the cockroaches and recording extracellular action potentials (spikes) with the SpikerBox apparatus as well as the importance of spike sorting for analysis in neuroscience. The spike sorting process requires students to choose the spike threshold and spike selection criteria and interact with the clustering process that forms the groups of similar spikes. Once the spike groups are identified, interspike intervals and neuron firing frequencies can be calculated and analyzed. A classic neurophysiology lab exercise is thus adapted to be interdisciplinary for underrepresented students in a small rural college.

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