\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,pdftex]{exam} \newcommand{\exercisetopic}{Point processes} \newcommand{\exercisenum}{11} \newcommand{\exercisedate}{January 19th, 2021} \input{../../exercisesheader} \firstpagefooter{Prof. Dr. Jan Benda}{}{jan.benda@uni-tuebingen.de} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \begin{document} \input{../../exercisestitle} \begin{questions} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \question \qt{Read in chapter 10 on ``Spike-train analysis'' sections 10.1 -- 10.5!}\vspace{-3ex} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \question \qt{Statistics of interspike intervals} Download the files \code{poisson.mat}, \code{pifou.mat}, and \code{lifadapt.mat} from Ilias. Each of these files contains several trials of spike trains of a specific type of neuron. The spike times are measured in seconds. We want to compare the statistics of the interspike intervals of the three neurons. \begin{parts} \part Load the spike trains from the three files. Make sure that the data are assigned to different variables. What is the type of the data? How can you access individual spike trains? How do you access single spike times? \begin{solution} \begin{lstlisting} % not so good: clear all load poisson.mat whos poissonspikes = spikes; load pifou.mat; pifouspikes = spikes; load lifadapt.mat; lifadaptspikes = spikes; clear spikes; % better: clear all x = load('poisson.mat'); poissonspikes = x.spikes; x = load('pifou.mat'); pifouspikes = x.spikes; x = load('lifadapt.mat'); lifadaptspikes = x.spikes; clear x; \end{lstlisting} The files contain cell arrays with 20 trials of spike trains. Each spike train is a vector containing the times of spikes. \begin{lstlisting} % access first trial: trial = poissonspikes{1}; % access second spike of first trial: trial(2); \end{lstlisting} \end{solution} \newsolutionpage \part Write a function that displays the spike times of the first $t_{max}$ seconds in a raster plot. Each spike train is one row in the raster plot. Each spike is a vertical line at the time of the spike. When appropriate, the function should use milliseconds for the time axis instead of seconds. Use this function to plot the first second of the spike rasters of the three neurons. Carefully look at the raster plots. How do the spike rasters differ between the three neurons? \begin{solution} \lstinputlisting{rasterplot.m} \lstinputlisting{plotspikeraster.m} \mbox{}\\[-3ex] \colorbox{white}{\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{spikeraster}} \end{solution} \part Write a function that returns a single vector containing the interspike intervals of all trials of spike times. \begin{solution} \lstinputlisting{isis.m} \end{solution} \part Write a function that computes an estimate of the probability density of interspike intervals from a vector of interspike intervals. The function should automatically choose a good bin width for the histogram. Write another function that plots the probability density of interspike intervals given a vector of interspike intervals as argument. The function should use the first function for computing the probability density. The interspike intervals are given in seconds, but the plot should mark the interspike intervals in milliseconds. In addition, the function should compute the mean, the standard deviation and the coefficient of variation and display them in the plot as well. Use this and the previous functions to compare the interspike interval statistics of the three neurons. How do the ISI histograms differ between the three neurons? \begin{solution} \lstinputlisting{isihist.m} \lstinputlisting{plotisihist.m} \lstinputlisting{plotisihs.m} \mbox{}\\[-3ex] \colorbox{white}{\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{isihist}} \end{solution} \part Compare the interspike interval histogram of the Poisson spike train to the expected exponential distribution \[ p(T) = \lambda e^{-\lambda T} \; .\] of a Poisson process with firing rate $\lambda$. Estimate the firing rate from the inverse of the mean interspike interval. \begin{solution} \lstinputlisting{plotpoissonisih.m} \mbox{}\\[-3ex] \colorbox{white}{\includegraphics{poissonisihist}} \end{solution} \continue % XXX Add return map!!! XXX \part Write a function that computes the serial correlations of interspike intervals for lags up to \code{maxlag}. The serial correlations $\rho_k$ for lag $k$ of the interspike intervals $T_i$ are the correlation coefficients between interspike intervals $T_i$ and the intervals $T_{i+k}$ that are shifted by lag $k$: \[ \rho_k = \frac{\langle (T_{i+k} - \langle T \rangle)(T_i - \langle T \rangle) \rangle}{\langle (T_i - \langle T \rangle)^2\rangle} = \frac{{\rm cov}(T_{i+k}, T_i)}{{\rm var}(T_i)} = {\rm corr}(T_{i+k}, T_i) \] Write another function that plots the serial correlations. Use the functions to compare the serial correlations of the interspike intervals of the three neurons. What do the serial correlations mean? How do they relate to what you see in the raster plots? Do the serial correlations of the Poisson spike train match the expectations? \begin{solution} \lstinputlisting{isiserialcorr.m} \lstinputlisting{plotisiserialcorr.m} \lstinputlisting{plotserialcorr.m} \colorbox{white}{\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{serialcorr}} \end{solution} \end{parts} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \question \qt{Statistics of spike counts} Now let's have a look at the statistics of the spike counts. \begin{parts} \part \label{counts} Write a function that counts with the number of spikes in windows of a given width $W$. The spikes are passed to the function as a cell array containing vectors of spike times. The function returns a single vector with all the spike counts. \begin{solution} \lstinputlisting{counts.m} \end{solution} \part Generate a properly normalized histogram of spike counts for the data of the three types of neurons. Use 100\,ms for the window width and the function from (\ref{counts}) for computing the spike counts. In addition, compare the distributions with the Poisson distribution expected for a Poisson spike train: \[ P(k) = \frac{(\lambda W)^ke^{-\lambda W}}{k!} \; , \] where $\lambda$ is the rate of the spike train that you should estimate from the data. \begin{solution} \newsolutionpage \lstinputlisting{spikecountshists.m} \colorbox{white}{\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{spikecountshists}} \end{solution} \newsolutionpage \part Write a function that computes for a range of window widths the mean, the variance and the Fano factor of the corresponding spike counts. The function should generate two plots. One showing the spike count variance in dependence on the mean spike count (the mean spike count increases for larger window widths). The other plot showing the Fano factor as a function of window width. \begin{solution} \lstinputlisting{fanoplot.m} \newsolutionpage \lstinputlisting{fanoplots.m} \colorbox{white}{\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{fanoplotspoisson}} \colorbox{white}{\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{fanoplotspifou}} \colorbox{white}{\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{fanoplotslifadapt}} \end{solution} \end{parts} \end{questions} \end{document}