An automated method to determine angular preferentiality using LFPs recorded from rat barrel cortex by brain-chip interface under mechanical whisker stimulation

The sensory information processing in the rodents is mainly done by whisking, through which they explore the environment, perform object localization, texture and shape discrimination very precisely. During whisking, microcircuits in the corresponding barrel columns get activated to segregate and integrate the tactile information through the information processing pathway. To primarily understand the whisking mechanism angular preferentiality determination is very important. In this work we propose an automated method to determine different events present in the local field potentials (LFPs), calculate latencies and amplitudes related to those events and use them along with the stimulation angle information to determine the angular preferentiality. The method is extensively tested on LFPs recorded from S1 barrel cortex of anesthetized rats using EOSFET (Electrolyte-Oxide-Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) based neuronal probes.