Over the past four years, the OpenBehavior project has been dedicated to sharing news about open-source tools for neuroscience research. Now, we’re taking a closer look at the impact of these tools!
Measuring Impact Through Page Hits
Using data from the Jetpack app, we’re analyzing website traffic to identify the most popular tools featured on our site. Every other week, we’ll be sharing insights into the tools with the highest page hits, both over the past four years and within the last year.
A Classroom-Inspired Initiative
This initiative was sparked by a computational methods course we teach, which covers Python programming, Arduino-based experimental design, and 2D/3D design and printing. We recently challenged our students to investigate the top 20 most popular tools from our website (10 from the past four years and 10 from the last year). They explored the developers, users, and applications of each tool. This exercise proved to be incredibly valuable for the students, and it inspired us to delve deeper and share our findings with the broader community.
Understanding the Impact of Open-Source Tools
By analyzing the impact of these tools, we hope to:
- Highlight the contributions of open-source methods to neuroscience research.
- Introduce newer followers to valuable tools from our earlier posts.
Our First Analysis: The Two-Armed Bandit Task
We started by examining page hits on the OpenBehavior website and created a word cloud to visualize the 50 most popular tools. The clear winner was a set of instructions for setting up a Two-Armed Bandit Task, shared by the lab of Bernado Sabbatini back in April 2021.
Why has this resource been so popular? It provides:
- Code for a common behavioral task: Researchers can easily adapt the code for other rodent tasks using three choice ports.
- Hardware designs: The project includes designs for the behavioral chamber and response ports.
- Comprehensive materials list: Researchers can build the system from scratch with the provided list.
This project exemplifies the value of sharing “Setups and Protocols.” We encourage the community to share similar resources to promote research continuity and collaboration.
Stay Tuned!
We’re excited to continue this journey of exploration and share more insights into the impact of open-source tools in neuroscience. Stay tuned for our bi-weekly updates!
Links:
Original Post: https://edspace.american.edu/openbehavior/project/2abt/
Repository: https://github.com/bernardosabatinilab/two-armed-bandit-task