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scientificComputing/projects/project_serialcorrelation/serialcorrelation.tex

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\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,pdftex]{exam}
\newcommand{\ptitle}{Serial ISI correlations}
\input{../header.tex}
\firstpagefooter{Supervisor: Jan Benda}{}{email: jan.benda@uni-tuebingen.de}
\begin{document}
\input{../instructions.tex}
The gymnotiform weakly electric fish \textit{Apteronotus
leptorhynchus} has an active electrosensory system. An electric
organ generates an electric field surrounding the
fish. Electroreceptive organs distributed over the whole body of the
fish sense minute perturbations of the electric field caused by
objects close to the fish. P-unit electroreceptor afferents send
information from the electroreceptive organs to the brain. They are
spontaneously active when the fish is not electrically stimulated,
that is when the electroreceptors are only stimulated by the fish's
own unperturbed electric field.
In this project we want to analyze how the baseline firing rates and
the serial correlations of the interspike intervals vary between
different P-units.
In the file \texttt{baselinespikes.mat} you find two variables:
\texttt{cells} is a cell-array with the names of the recorded cells
and \texttt{spikes} is a cell array containing the spike times in
seconds of recorded spontaneous activity for each of these cells.
\begin{questions}
\question Baseline firing properties
\begin{parts}
\part Load the data! How many cells are contained in the file?
\part Plot the spike rasters of a few cells.
For the presentation, choose a few cells based on the results of
this project.
By just looking on the spike rasters, what are the differences
between the cells?
\part Compute the firing rate of each cell, i.e. number of spikes per time.
Illustrate the results by means of a histogram and/or box whisker plot.
\part Compute interspike-interval histograms and the
coefficient-of-variation of the interspike intervals, $C_{ISI}$,
for each of the cells.
\end{parts}
\question Serial correlations
\begin{parts}
\part Compute and plot the serial correlations between interspike
intervals up to lag 10.
What do you observe? In what way are the interspike-interval
correlations similar betwen the cells? How do they differ?
\part Illustrate relevant serial correlations with a return
map. How is the return map related to what you see in the
corresponding raster plot? How is it related to the corresponding
serial correlation?
\part Implement a permutation test for computing the significance
at an appropriate significance level of the serial
correlations. Keep in mind that you test the correlations at 10
different lags. At which lags are the serial correlations
statistically significant?
\part Are the serial correlations somehow dependent on the firing rate?
Plot the significant correlations against the firing rate. Do you
observe any dependence?
Use an appropriate statistical test to support your observation.
\end{parts}
\end{questions}
\end{document}