Spike times from intracellular responses to step currents in juvenile zebra finch caudal mesopallium

Data from intracellular recordings obtained from neurons in the caudal mesopallium of 52 juvenile (30-35 days post hatch) zebra finches of both sexes. All procedures were performed according to National Institutes of Health guidelines and protocols approved by the University of Virginia Institutional Animal Care and Use committee.

Details of rearing conditions and data collection are given in the associated publication. The spike_times.zip archive contains files corresponding to one intracellular recording epoch from a single neuron. Filenames follow the format {cell_id}_{epoch}.pprox. Each epoch comprises 20 sweeps. Each sweep was 6 s in duration: 100 ms at 0 pA, a 2000-ms depolarizing step, 1000 ms at 0 pA, 500 ms at -20 pA, 500 ms at -40 pA, 500 ms at -20 pA, and 1400 ms at 0 pA. The amplitude of the depolarizing pulse was systematically varied within each epoch over a range that was set so that at least 10 sweeps in each epoch evoked action potentials without eliciting depolarization block. The range of current steps was adjusted throughout the recording as needed.

The data are stored in a custom JSON-based format called pprox. Briefly, the JSON object contains metadata about the recording at the top level, and a field called "pprox" that comprises a list of objects corresponding to individual sweeps. Each sweep contains a field called "events" with a list of the times of the spikes that occurred during the trial, along with estimates of the membrane potential (Vm), series resistance (Rs), and input resistance (Rm).

The Python code used to produce the pprox files from the raw intracellular recording data and to analyze the results is available on github.