Spike sorting

Article summary

Spike sorting is a class of techniques used in the analysis of electrophysiological data. Spike sorting algorithms use the shape(s) of waveforms collected with one or more electrodes in the brain to distinguish the activity of one or more neurons from background electrical noise. The raw data for spike sorting comes from electrodes inserted into the brain, where they measure the extracellular potential. These electrodes come in many forms of varying size and sophistication, from the simple tetrode array of four electrodes, to multielectrode arrays with hundreds of signals, to integrated multi-thousand count devices such as Neuropixels or Neuralink. Neurons produce action potentials that are referred to as 'spikes' in laboratory jargon. Frequently this term is used for electrical signals recorded in the vicinity of individual neurons with a microelectrode (exception: 'spikes' in EEG recordings). In these recordings action potentials appear as sharp spikes (deviations from the baseline). Extracellular electrodes measure the field at the point of contact. This includes a slowly varying component, the local field potential or LFP, which is the sum of the activity of many neurons at varying distances. Superimposed on this are short, sharp spikes, from the action potentials of the few nearest neurons.…

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