Conventions

This package relies on stable naming conventions for dimensions, coordinates, and attributes. If you use the from_dataframe method to build your analysis object, it will be formatted correctly by default. If you create an xarray.DataArray object yourself, it should contain the following information:

Dimensions

  • trial: trial index for trial-aligned data

  • unit: neuron/unit index

  • time: time samples in seconds (or other unit in ephys.time_unit)

  • component: unit axis may be replaced by component axis after dimensionality reduction

Attributes

  • ephys.kind: "spikes_ragged", "binned", or "continuous"

  • ephys.timebase: "session" or "trial"

  • ephys.time_unit: typically "s"

  • ephys.valid_intervals: list of (tmin, tmax) tuples

  • ephys.history: list of processing steps (optional)

Defaults for adapters

When using from_dataframe, the default column names are:

  • spike_times: spike times in the units table

  • start_time: trial start time in the trials table

  • end_time (or stop_time): trial end time in the trials table

Events representation

The adapter builds events as a DataArray with dims (trial, event, bound), where bound contains "start" and "end". The align op accepts this representation directly and will use the "start" bound by default.

Where to find definitions

All constants are defined in aind_ephys_utils.standards.conventions.