Analyse the neuronal dynamics of experiments and brain simulations with this Electrophysiology Analysis Toolkit
The Python library Electrophysiology Analysis Toolkit (Elephant) provides tools for the analysis of neuronal activity data, such as spike trains, local field potentials and intracellular data. In addition to providing a platform for sharing analysis codes from different laboratories, Elephant provides a consistent and homogeneous framework for data analysis, built on a modular foundation. The underlying data model is the Neo library, a framework which easily captures a wide range of neuronal data types and methods, including dozens of file formats and network simulation tools. A common data description, as provided by the Neo library, is essential for developing interoperable analysis workflows.
Elephant, and its complementary data model Neo, are open-source Python libraries available for use offline, and both come pre-installed on the HBP Collaboratory Jupyter Notebooks service for immediate import. The packages are installable from the Python package index, and the sources are found on GitHub. For details, please refer to the install instructions and tutorial sections in the documentation.
Analysis workflows based on Elephant
Elephant is developed in constant, close exchange with scientific applications to ensure that its functionality will continue to be beneficial for the neuroscience community. A growing number of tutorials assist researchers in setting up their analysis workflows.
Training for the Elephant community
We offer a growing number of training opportunities for learning how to use Elephant to analyze activity data. The Advanced Neural Data Analysis spring school (ANDA) teaches students and young researchers how to employ the Elephant and Neo libraries to provide data analytics for electrophysiological data. The Elephant User Workshop complements the ANDA course and gives hands-on support for the use of Elephant, Neo and related HBP infrastructures in participants’ research projects. In addition, help from the community is always available through the Neural Ensemble mailing list and EBRAINS support portal.
