extracellular field generation

[wwlytton]

Does anyone have code for generating the extracellular field that would be seen by an electrode when running a network simulation? Presumably this could be done by weighting the membrane currents available with extracellular inserted into each section.

Bill Lytton

[ted]

I do. Uses extracellular, designed for, and works well with, single cells. Might
bog down big net simulations, if they have lots of segments. I'll send you a copy
via email; too much code to post here.

[AG]

Dear Ted and Bill, I am also interested in having more explanations concerning the use of extracellular recording/stimulation modeling tools. I understand the principle detailed in the documentation but till yet, have been unable to make it work. Even a small example (hoc &| mod file) would be really helpful to me.

AG.

[ted]

It's here
http://www.neuron.yale.edu/ftp/ted/neur ... nd_rec.zip

[DavidF]

I am interested in generating records of simulated extracellularly-recorded spikes for testing multiunit spike separation and clustering algorithms. The spikes must be good approximations of those obtained from an actual "wet" physiological preparation, with distinguishable waveshapes between cells. The advantage of using a simulation to generate test data, of course, is control over the parameters (e.g., number of firing units) and independent knowledge of which unit fired at what time point. For the moment I am not concerned with special situations like spike bursts, where the amplitude and spike shape change over the course of the burst, or time-overlaps of spikes from different units.

I would be interested to know if other researchers have used NEURON for this purpose, and if so what info on their implementation they would be prepared to share. I myself have not yet used NEURON or other neural simulation software, so this will be a learning experience (although I have plenty of engineering and software background). Thanks in advance for any helpful replies.

DavidF