behaviorMate: An Intranet of Things Approach for Adaptable Control of Behavioral and Navigation-Based Experiments

• Published in: bioRxiv
• Main Authors: Bowler, John C, Zakka, George, Hyun Choong Yong, Li, Wenke, Rao, Bovey, Liao, Zhenrui, Priestley, James B, Losonczy, Attila
• Format: Paper Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cold Spring Harbor Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 09.12.2023
• Subjects: Calcium imaging; Hippocampus; Software
• ISSN: 2692-8205; 2692-8205
• DOI: 10.1101/2023.12.04.569989

Investigators conducting behavioral experiments often need precise control over the timing of the delivery of stimuli to subjects. In addition, they may need to collect the precise times of their subsequent behavioral responses. Furthermore, investigators may want fine-tuned control over how various multi-modal cues are presented. behaviorMate is a cost-effective integrated system of hardware and software components for achieving these goals without requiring the user to run any code. It is simple to setup, use, and provides reproducibility of complex behavioral tasks. Following each session recording, behaviorMate outputs a file with integrated timestamp-event pairs that the investigator can then format and process using their own analysis pipeline. This time-stamped behavior data is especially useful when aligned with other data streams such as 2-photon calcium imaging or electrophysiological recordings. We present an overview of the electronic components and GUI application that make up behaviorMate as well as mechanical designs for compatible experimental rigs to provide the reader with the ability to set up their own system. A wide variety of behavioral paradigms are supported including goal-oriented learning, random foraging, and context switching. We demonstrate behaviorMate's utility and reliability with a range of use cases from several published studies and benchmark tests. Finally, we present experimental validation demonstrating different modalities of hippocampal place field studies.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.Footnotes* fixes a typo in the url provided in the supplementary materials section.* https://www.losonczylab.org/software/