Conversion

Unitret was originally written for a specific datafile format, produced by the old system in Max Snodderly lab. When we moved to the new system, that produces several types of files that have to be converted and linked together, I decided to make the transition "transparent" for data analysis, converting new system files to the old format. The HelpConversion2Unitret section describes the conversion process in details. Here I just outline the steps.

The BrainWare's native *.src file format is hidden from the user. It contains spikes times, spike shapes, and stimulus parameters. Spike times and stimulus parameters should be exported from BrainWare as *.f32 binary files (see BrainWare Help | Exporting Data: Format "Spike Times as Binary"). In addition, system eyetracker2.dll creates *.etd files with eye postion records. If we are dealing with multiunit that is hard to separate in BrainWare feature space, we also export spike shapes as ASCII (*.txt) files, in order to apply our unisplit.m PCA-based clustering. The program conver.m combines all types of files into Unitret datafile format. If conver.m does not find shapes *.txt files, it omits it, assuming that we have a clear single unit.

Important note: BrainWare will export ALL spike shapes to *.txt format, not only those within an outlined cluster. Binary *.f32 files, on other hand, will include only spikes within the cluster. To avoid discrepancy (and problems during separation), make sure you include ALL spikes within the BrainWare cluster before exporting to *.f32, if you are going to use unisplit.m.