Over the past several months, we’ve highlighted open-source projects that have captured the interest of our followers, focusing on specific categories such as behavioral devices or video analysis programs. In this final post of the series, we review projects that have generated significant interest during the first half of 2025.
By analyzing page hits on our WordPress blog, we’ve observed a general decrease in overall page views this year. One potential reason for this trend is that our primary referral source, Twitter/X, has seen a decline in usage among many neuroscientists over the past year. While we made efforts to generate interest for the OpenBehavior project on an alternative platform, Bluesky, traffic directed from that platform has been minimal. We believe this may be partly due to the limited presence or activity of many trainees and early-stage investigators on Bluesky, who, based on user feedback and attendance at our workshops and social events (like the open-source tools workshop at the SfN meeting), have historically been our most active followers.
Nevertheless, the word cloud above represents the top thirty tools based on website traffic in the first half of 2025. These projects offer a diverse range of useful tools, including those for electrophysiology data analysis (ghostipy), histological quantification (Bell Jar), video analysis (BORIS), neural implants (DREAM), and behavioral apparatuses (NC4gate). Detailed descriptions of the top ten projects are provided below. We hope these projects prove valuable to the community.
- ghostipy
- An open-source Python toolbox for signal processing and spectral analysis of local field potentials (LFP).
- We posted about it in January 2025 (here).
- Bell Jar
- A semi-automated approach for histological analyses, provided as a standalone program. It aligns tissue sections to the Allen reference atlas and offers tools for section alignment, fluorescent marker detection, and quantification.
- We posted about it in May 2025 (here).
- BORIS
- An open-source and standalone program for behavioral analysis from video recordings, allowing users to define ethograms and measure when animals engage in distinct behaviors.
- We posted about it in December 2016 (here). This is one of the earliest tools we featured on OpenBehavior, and we are delighted that it continues to be of interest to the community.
- The DREAM Implant
- A novel implant design for in-vivo electrophysiology in mice, useful for both head-fixed and freely moving studies.
- We posted about it in January 2025 (here).
- NC4gate
- A fully customizable gate system that can be used in behavioral experiments involving rodent mazes (T-maze, Y-maze, radial arm, etc.).
- We posted about it in February 2025 (here).
- Optic-Fiber Lickometer
- An optical-fiber lickometer with an integrated second beam to detect head entries at the reward port.
- We posted about it in February 2025 (here).
- Two-Armed Bandit Task (TAB)
- A complete design for creating a two-armed bandit task, also useful for other tasks involving head entries in freely moving rodents. This has been one of the most-read projects on our website over the years and is a true testament to the open sharing of experimental designs and protocols.
- We posted about it in April 2021 (here).
- FlexRig
- Another outstanding example of a shared design with protocols for behavioral testing. This design allows for studies of decision-making and behavioral flexibility using multiple types of sensory stimuli.
- We posted about it in February 2025 (here).
- STPoseNet
- Software for video analysis based on the YOLOv8 platform, using timing information and Kalman filtering to improve keypoint detection. It offers a truly novel approach to processing video pose data.
- We posted about it in April 2025 (here).
- MoSeq
- A highly novel approach to video pose analysis. This tool allows for capturing and quantifying the dynamics of actions and defining the “syllables” of behavior. This is an incredibly useful tool for many researchers, and we are delighted that the developers fully shared their code.
- We posted about it in February 2024 (here).