The Relacs GUI. This is how relacs looks when using the Auditory plugins for doing electrophysiology on auditory systems. The running research protocol is the SingleStimulus RePro. You see the four main widgets of relacs:

Voltage traces

(top right) The plot shows the currently recorded voltage trace (green) together with optionally filtered traces (no ones in this example) and detected events, such as spikes (yellow circels).

Filter/Detectors

(top left) Here you can set parameter of filter and detectors that are immediately applied on the recorded data. The example shows a spike detector that displays the distribution of peaks in the voltage trace that were detected as spikes (green) and non-detected peaks (red). The vertical white line inbetween is the current threshold used for detecting peaks as spikes.

Controls

(bottom left) Various widgets can display the current state of the recording or some general features such as the power spectrum of the recorded voltage trace. In the example you see the threshold curve of an auditory neuron (upper plot, stimulus required to evoke a minimal response as a function of sound frequency) and the f-I curve at the carrier frequency where the neuron is most sensitive (lower plot, firing rate versus stimulus intensity).

Research protocols

(bottom right) The research protocols run the experiment. That is, they generate and play stimuli, analyse the recordings, save data, and display important results. Here, an Ohrnbeck-Uhlenstein noise (lower plot, green trace) is used to stimulate an auditory receptor neuron. The resulting spike raster (red strokes) and the firing rates (yellow and orange lines) are displayed in the upper plot.

EFish Plugins. This is how relacs looks when using the EFish plugins for doing electrophysiology on weakly electric fish. The upper trace is the membrane voltage of the recorded neuron. The other two traces are the electic field of the fish (EOD) with and without the stimulus. The running research protocol is the Chirps RePro.

Patchclamp Plugins. This is how relacs looks when using the Patchclamp plugins for doing electrophysiology on slices. The running research protocol is the FICurve RePro.

Base Plugins. This is how relacs looks when using the Base plugins. The running research protocol is the TransferFunction RePro.

The Relacs Tux. The Linux-kernel mascot very relaxed holds a micro-electrode for electrophysiological recordings. The mexican hat symbolizes a neuron's receptive field that is better to be recorded in a closed-loop fashion.