Auditory Cortex Spikes. This data set comes from experiments in the lab of Dr. Robert Liu of Emory University4 and concerns single-unit electrophysiology in the auditory cortex of non-anesthetized...

Auditory Cortex Spikes. This data set comes from experiments in the lab of Dr. Robert Liu of Emory University4 and concerns single-unit electrophysiology in the auditory cortex of non-anesthetized female mice. The motivating question is the exploration of auditory neural differences between female parents vs. female virgins and their relationship to cortical response. Researchers in Liu’s lab developed a restrained awake setup to collect single neuron activity from both female parent and female naïve mice. Multiple trials are performed on the neurons from one mother and one naïve animal.

The recordings are made from a region in the auditory cortex of the mouse with a single tungsten electrode. A sound stimulus is presented at a time of 200 ms during each sweep (time shown is 0–611 and 200 is the point at which a stimulus is presented). Each sweep is 611 ms long and the duration of the stimulus tone is 10 to 70 ms. The firing times for mother and naïve mice are provided in the data set spikes.dat, in columns 2 and 3. Column 1 is the numbering from 1 to 611.

(a) Using MATLAB’s diff command, find the inter-firing times. Plot a histogram for both sets of inter firing times. Use biplot. m to plot the histograms back to back.

(b) For inter-firing times in the mother’s response find descriptive statistics similar to those in the cell area example.