Toolboxes for Spike and LFP Analysis

There are a number of open source toolboxes available for neural data analysis, especially for spike and local field potential data. With more options comes a more difficult decision when it comes to selecting the toolbox that’s right for your data. Fortunately, Valentina Unakafova and Alexander Gail have compared several toolboxes for spike and LFP analysis, connectivity analysis, dimensionality reduction, and generalized linear modeling. They discuss the major features of software available for Python and MATLAB (Octave) including Brainstorm, Chronux, Elephant, FieldTrip, gramm, Spike Viewer, and SPIKY. They include succinct tables for assessing system and program requirements, quality of documentation and support, and data types accepted by each toolbox. Using an open-access dataset, they assess the functionality of the programs and finish their comparison with highlighting advantages of each toolbox to consider when trying to find the one that works best for your data. The files they used to compare toolboxes are all available from GitHub to supplement their paper.

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. RRID:SCR_021478