as.htbDb: Constructor of empty htbDb objects

In keimochizuki/htb: Read and Analyze Neural Activities Acquired by TEMPO System

Constructor of empty htbDb objects

Description

Constructs an empty/artificial htbDb object with designated type.

Usage

as.htbDb(db, type)

Arguments

db	A list. The dataset to be converted into an htbDb object.
type	A string. The type of the resulting htbDb object (either one of spike, event or analog).

Details

The readout from an .htb file is a list of htbDb objects which is the most primitive data in TEMPO system. Normally you will continue analyzing those extracted data obtained in your own real-world experiment. However, there can be times that you want to test your analyses using artificially constructed spike, event and/or analog data. This way you can check whether your script is working correctly or not using virtual data with known properties (e.g., time locking to some events, difference in firing rates, etc...).

as.htbDb() offers an easy way for this kind of artificial data construction. It creates an htbDb object with empty, or arbitrary artificial data contents provided by the user. Because htbDb objects is actually a list with predetermined properties and naming rules, as.htbDb() receives a list as an input object, and converts it to an htbDb object. Each element of the input list is regarded as separate channels of constructed htbDb object (i.e., spike timings for spike database, codes of events for event database, and analog integer values for analog database).

Note that for event databases, normal htbGetDb() function performs data transformation using character pattern matching (see Details in htbGetDb()). In as.htbDb(), however, just pass event names (a vector of strings) directly in the first element of the input list. The second element is regarded as channel with timing information.

Value

An htbDb object. Note that normal readout from htbGetDb() function is a list of htbDb objects, because an htb file can contain multiple databases at once. On the other hand, as.htbDb() returns just an htbDb ojbect (not a list of those objects). Therefore, some kind of data nesting and/or nest unpacking may be required to use constructed htbDb object(s) in your testing.

Examples

db_spike <- as.htbDb(replicate(3, {
  cumsum(ceiling(runif(100, 10, 50))) },
  simplify = FALSE),
  type = "spike")

db_event <- as.htbDb(list(
  c("TRL_START", "EV1", "EV2", "REWARD", "TRL_END"),
  time = cumsum(ceiling(runif(5, 100, 300)))),
  type = "event")

db_analog <- as.htbDb(replicate(2, {
  cumsum(ceiling(rnorm(2000, sd = 4))) },
  simplify = FALSE), type = "analog")

keimochizuki/htb documentation built on June 9, 2025, 10:03 p.m.