Title
Automatic spike sorting using tuning information.
Abstract
Current spike sorting methods focus on clustering neurons' characteristic spike waveforms. The resulting spike-sorted data are typically used to estimate how covariates of interest modulate the firing rates of neurons. However, when these covariates do modulate the firing rates, they provide information about spikes' identities, which thus far have been ignored for the purpose of spike sorting. This letter describes a novel approach to spike sorting, which incorporates both waveform information and tuning information obtained from the modulation of firing rates. Because it efficiently uses all the available information, this spike sorter yields lower spike misclassification rates than traditional automatic spike sorters. This theoretical result is verified empirically on several examples. The proposed method does not require additional assumptions; only its implementation is different. It essentially consists of performing spike sorting and tuning estimation simultaneously rather than sequentially, as is currently done. We used an expectation-maximization maximum likelihood algorithm to implement the new spike sorter. We present the general form of this algorithm and provide a detailed implementable version under the assumptions that neurons are independent and spike according to Poisson processes. Finally, we uncover a systematic flaw of spike sorting based on waveform information only.
Year
DOI
Venue
2009
10.1162/neco.2009.12-07-669
Neural Computation
Keywords
Field
DocType
traditional automatic spike sorter,firing rate,characteristic spike waveform,available information,current spike,new spike sorter,spike misclassification rate,tuning information,spike sorter yield,waveform information,expectation maximization,maximum likelihood,poisson process
Spike sorting,Computer science,Waveform,Models of neural computation,Algorithm,Sorting,Poisson distribution,Cluster analysis,Artificial neural network,Maximization
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
21
9
0899-7667
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
8
0.61
5
Authors
1
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Valérie Ventura125336.45