Learning the fundamentals of pynapple

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Learning the fundamentals of pynapple#

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Learning objectives#

Instantiate pynapple objects
Make pynapple objects interact
Use numpy with pynapple
Slice pynapple objects
Add metadata to pynapple objects
Apply core functions of pynapple

Resources:

Let’s start by importing the pynapple package and matplotlib to see if everything is correctly installed. If an import fails, you can do !pip install pynapple matplotlib in a cell to fix it.

import workshop_utils
import pynapple as nap
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

var1 = np.random.randn(100) # Variable 1
tsp1 = np.arange(100) # The timesteps of variable 1

var2 = np.random.randn(100, 3) # Variable 2
tsp2 = np.arange(0, 100, 1) # The timesteps of variable 2
col2 = ['pineapple', 'banana', 'tomato'] # The name of each columns of var2

var3 = np.random.randn(1000, 4, 5) # Variable 3
tsp3 = np.arange(0, 100, 0.1) # The timesteps of variable 3

random_times_1 = np.array([3.14, 37.0, 42.0])
random_times_2 = np.array([10, 25, 50, 70])
random_times_3 = np.sort(np.random.uniform(10, 80, 100))

starts_1 = np.array([10000, 60000, 90000]) # starts of an epoch in `ms`
ends_1 = np.array([20000, 80000, 95000]) # ends in `ms`

Instantiate pynapple objects#

Question: Can you instantiate the right pynapple objects for var1, var2 and var3? Objects should be named respectively tsd1, tsd2 and tsd3. Don’t forget the column name for var2.

# enter code here

Question: Can you print tsd1?

# enter code here

Question: Can you print tsd2?

# enter code here

Question: Can you print tsd3?

# enter code here

Question: Can you create an IntervalSet called ep out of starts_1 and ends_1 and print it? Be careful, times given above are in ms.

# enter code here

The experiment generated a set of timestamps from 3 different channels.

Question: Can you instantiate the corresponding pynapple object (ts1, ts2, ts3) for each one of them?

# enter code here

This is a lot of timestamps to carry around as well.

Question: Can you instantiate the right pynapple object (call it tsgroup) to group them together?

# enter code here

Question: Can you print the result?

# enter code here

Interaction between pynapple objects#

Question: Can you print the time_support of tsgroup?

# enter code here

Question: can you recreate the tsgroup object passing the right time_support during initialisation?

# enter code here

Question: Can you print the time_support and rate to see how they changed?

# enter code here

Now you notice that variable tsd1 has some noise. The good signal is between 10 and 30 seconds and 50 and 100.

Question: Can you create an IntervalSet object called ep_signal and use it to restrict the variable tsd1?

# enter code here

You can print tsd1 to check that the timestamps are in fact within ep. You can also check the time_support of tsd1 to see that it has been updated.

# enter code here

ep_tmp = nap.IntervalSet(np.sort(np.random.uniform(0, 100, 20)))
print(ep_tmp)

Question: Can you do the intersection of ep_signal and ep_tmp?

# enter code here

You can visualize IntervalSet using the function workshop_utils.visualize_intervals we provide.

workshop_utils.visualize_intervals([ep_signal, ep_tmp, ep_signal.intersect(ep_tmp)])

Question: Can you do the union of ep_signal and ep_tmp?

# enter code here

Question: Can you visualize it?

# enter code here

Question: Can you do the difference of ep_signal and ep_tmp?

# enter code here

Question: Can you visualize it?

# enter code here

Numpy & pynapple#

Pynapple objects behave similarly to numpy arrays. They can be sliced with the following syntax :

tsd[0:10] # First 10 elements

Arithmetical operations are available as well :

tsd = tsd + 1

Finally numpy functions works directly. Let’s imagine tsd3 is a movie with frame size (4,5).

Question: Can you compute the average frame along the time axis using np.mean and print the result?

# enter code here

Question: can you compute the average of tsd2 for each timestamps and print it?

# enter code here

Slicing pynapple objects#

Question: Can you extract the first and last epoch of ep in a new IntervalSet?

# enter code here

Sometimes you want to get a data point as close as possible in time to another timestamps.

Question: Using the get method, can you get the data point from tsd3 as close as possible to the time 50.1 seconds?

# enter code here

Metadata#

Metadata allow you to attach labels and additional information to your data objects. They are ubiquitous in neuroscience. They can be added to 3 pynapple objects :

TsGroup : to label neurons in electrophysiology
IntervalSet : to label intervals
TsdFrame : to label neurons in calcium imaging

Question: Can you run the following command tsgroup['planet'] = ['mars', 'venus', 'saturn']

# enter code here

Question: Can you print the result?

# enter code here

The object ep has 3 epochs labelled ['left', 'right', 'left'].

Question: Can you add them as a metadata column called direction?

# enter code here

The object tsd2 has 3 columns. Each column correspond to the rgb colors [(0,0,1), (0.5, 0.5, 1), (0.1, 0.2, 0.3)].

Question: Can you add them as metadata of tsd2?

# enter code here

You can also add metadata at initialization as a dictionary using the keyword argument metadata:

tsgroup = nap.TsGroup({0:ts1, 1:ts2, 2:ts3}, metadata={'planet':['mars','venus', 'saturn']})

print(tsgroup)

Metadata are accessible either as attributes (i.e. tsgroup.planet) or as dictionary-like keys (i.e. ep['direction']).

They can be used to slice objects.

Question: Can you select only the elements of tsgroup with rate below 1Hz?

# enter code here

Question: Can you select the intervals in ep labelled as 'left'?

# enter code here

Special case of slicing : `TsdFrame`#

tsdframe = nap.TsdFrame(t=np.arange(4), d=np.random.randn(4,3),
  columns = [12, 0, 1], metadata={'alpha':[2,1,0]})

print(tsdframe)

Question: What happen when you do tsdframe[0] vs tsdframe[:,0] vs tsdframe[[12,1]]

# enter code here

Question: What happen when you do tsdframe.loc[0] and tsdframe.loc[[0,1]]

# enter code here

Question: What happen when you do tsdframe[:,tsdframe.alpha==2]

# enter code here

Core functions of pynapple#

This part focuses on the most important core functions of pynapple.

Question: Using the count function, can you count the number of events within 1 second bins for tsgroup over the ep_signal intervals?

# enter code here

Question: In two subplots, can you show the count and events over time?

# enter code here

From a set of timestamps, you want to assign them a set of values with the closest point in time of another time series.

Question: Using the function value_from, can you assign values to ts2 from the tsd1 time series and call the output new_tsd?

# enter code here

Question: Can you plot together tsd1, ts2 and new_tsd?

# enter code here

One important aspect of data analysis is to bring data to the same size. Pynapple provides the bin_average function to downsample data.

Question: Can you downsample tsd2 to one time point every 5 seconds?

# enter code here

Question: Can you plot the tomato column from tsd2 as well as the downsampled version?

# enter code here

For tsd1, you want to find all the epochs for which the value is above 0.0. Pynapple provides the function threshold to get 1 dimensional time series above or below a certain value.

Question: Can you print the epochs for which tsd1 is above 0.0?

# enter code here

Question: can you plot tsd1 as well as the epochs for which tsd1 is above 0.0?

# enter code here

First high level function : `compute_tuning_curves`#

Pynapple provides functions for standard analysis in systems neuroscience. The first function we will try is compute_tuning_curves that calculate the response of a cell to a particular feature.

A good practice when using a function for the first time is to check the docstrings to learn how to pass the argument.

Question: can you examine the docstring of nap.compute_tuning_curves?

# enter code here

Question: Can you compute the response (i.e. firing rate) of the units in tsgroup as function of the feature tsd1 using the function nap.compute_tuning_curves?

# enter code here

The output is an xarray object. It is a wrapper of numpy array with extra attributes. It allows to give coordinates to each dimensions as well as attaching attributes. We can make the output look better by labelling the feature we used.

The coordinates can be accessed with the coords attribute. The feature position (i.e. center of the bin) can be accessed with the attribute.

Question: Can you print the underlying the units number, bin center and bin edges of the tuning curve xarray object?

# enter code here

Question: Can you plot the tuning curves for all units?

# enter code here

Verify Your Setup#

Question: Does the following data download work correctly? If not, please ask a TA.

import workshop_utils
path = workshop_utils.fetch_data("Mouse32-140822.nwb")
print(path)