LinCoM

Christoforos Papasavvas from Newcastle University has shared the following about LinCoM, a MATLAB toolbox for producing linear place fields for hippocampal cells during behavior in complex mazes.

‘Research in the field of spatial coding typically involves recording in parallel the trajectory of an animal in a maze and the activity of hippocampal place cells. These data are then analyzed to produce place fields, which are typically 2-dimensional, revealing the location preference of each place cell. Transformation of 2D place fields to linear (1D) place fields is usually advantageous. Linearization of place fields enables further analysis, such as the production of place cell sequences which encode for episodic memories. While linearization is straightforward in linear tracks, it is a non-trivial problem in complex mazes.

LinCoM is a MATLAB toolbox addressing the problem of place field linearization in complex mazes. It was specifically designed to deal with mazes with one or more decision points (e.g., T-maze, W-maze, double T-maze, radial maze, plus maze, etc). Nevertheless, LinCoM can be used as well on simple linear tracks. It is highly autonomous for efficient analysis while it provides the option of reviewing intermediate results.‘

This research tool was created by your colleagues. Please acknowledge the Principal Investigator, cite the article in which the tool was described, and include an RRID in the Materials and Methods of your future publications.  Project portal RRID:SCR_021438; Software RRID:SCR_021519