Basics

1. NeuroMatic Folders

NeuroMatic data folders contain your acquired/imported data, channel folders to hold the channel display variables, and all other variables and waves necessary to interact with NeuroMatic, such as the Set and Group waves. If data was acquired using Nclamp, NeuroMatic data folders will also contain the Stimulus folder used to acquire the data and a copy of the Notes folder.

Use the Folder (F) drop-down menu (1) to select the current folder to analyze, or to execute a folder function such as “New”, “Open”, “Save” or “Duplicate”.

Also see Data / Folders.

2. Current Wave Prefix

The string variable CurrentPrefix determines which waves NeuroMatic displays and analyzes. The value of CurrentPrefix is displayed at the top of NeuroMatic’s control panel in a drop-down menu (2). Use this menu to add or change the value of CurrentPrefix. NeuroMatic will search for any waves in the current directory that begin with the new prefix, after which you can use the wave increment controls (3) to step through your data.

In the above example, CurrentPrefix = “Record”. NeuroMatic recognizes 100 waves in the current directory named RecordA0, RecordA1, RecordA2... RecordA99, where “A” stands for the first recorded channel.

The string variable WavePrefix is the prefix name for waves that have been acquired with Nclamp, or imported via the Pclamp or Axograph import functions.

3. Current Wave

Use the <> buttons or slider control to step through your waves that begin with CurrentPrefix. The number displayed is the global variable CurrentWave, which together with CurrentPrefix determines the current active wave(s) to display and analyze. In the above example, the current active wave is RecordA2.

4. Increment Controller

Use the (+) drop-down menu (4) to change the behavior of the current wave increment controls (3). For example, if you want to view every other wave, or if you want to view only those waves currently selected (7) (“As Wave Select”).

5. Sets

Data waves can be categorized into various sets, such as Set1, Set2 and SetX. To categorize the current active wave (RecordA2) as Set1, for example, simply check the Set1 box. If you have a lot of waves to categorize as Set1, use the Sets Panel to define a range of waves or edit via a table. To analyze waves in a particular set, use the Wave Select (7) to select the set or combination of sets you wish to analyze.

Note, SetX is a special set used to exclude data from all analyses. This is useful if you have bad traces that need to be discarded.

Click the “Sets” button to open the Sets Panel.

Also see Sets.

6. Groups

If your data consists of several repetitions of a stimulus protocol, use “Groups” to categorize your waves. Consider for example a current-voltage stimulus protocol with 10 different voltage steps repeated 15 times resulting in 150 waves. Setting the number of groups on the Groups Panel to 10 will now allow you to analyze each voltage step independently using the Wave Select control (7).

If Groups is on, the group number pertaining to each wave appears to the right of the current wave number (Grp).

Select “Edit Groups” to open the Groups Panel.

Also see Groups.

7. Chan / Wave Select

Select the channel to analyze with the channel drop-down menu (for example, “A” for Channel 0) and the data sets to analyze with the wave drop-down menu (for example, “All” or “Set1” or “Group0”). The number of waves selected per channel appears to the right (here, 48 waves). The channel and wave select controls are global in that they determine the waves to be analyzed within the various analysis tabs such as Main, Stats, Spike and Event.

8. OverWrite Mode

Various functions in NeuroMatic create waves and plots as their final output. The function Average, for example, produces an output wave named something like “Avg_RS1_A0” and a plot named something like “MN_F1_Avg_RS1_A0”, where the last “A” stands for Channel 0 and “0” is the overwrite sequence number. Having OverWrite checked true on the bottom of NeuroMatic’s control panel means these “A0” waves and plots will be over-written. If OverWrite is unchecked, however, then a new set of waves and plots will be generated whose names end with the next available channel sequence number (i.e. “A1”).