title: A simple indicator of nonstationarity of firing rate in spike trains.
abstract: The assessment of stationarity of firing rate in neural spike trains is important but is often performed only visually. Facing the growing amount of neural data generated by multi-electrode recording, there is a need for an automatic method to identify and disqualify spike trains with highly nonstationary firing rates. In this report, we propose a simple test of nonstationarity, associated with an indicator quantifying the degree of nonstationary in a spike train. This method is compared to the Mann-Kendall test of trend detection and the Runs test on simulated and real spike trains.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alta., Canada. boris@pi314.net
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gourévitch
authors.forename: Jos J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Eggermont
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008959:Models, Neurological; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D013269:Stochastic Processes