November 7, 2001 Greetings to all the Mini Analysis Program users! This newsletter informs the users of Mini Analysis Program about the updates and changes in the program. The Mini Analysis Program Satelite Symposium is coming up in San Diego at this year's Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. The detailed schedule is listed in this newsletter. See you all there! Mini Analysis Program version 5.4 is just released. To upgrade from previous versions, download the MiniAnal.exe file from our upgrade home page at http://www.syanptosoft.com/MiniAnalysis/UpgradeOnly.html. The Most exciting features in version 5.4 includes Non-stationary noise analysis and new and improved exponential decay fitting. Many people have been asking about the satelite symposium at the upcoming neuroscience meeting in San Diego. The title of the symposium is, "Analyzing Spontaneous Activities with Mini Analysis Program and Single Channel Kinetics with Channelab" and is scheduled for 3:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Saturday, Nov 10th. San Diego Convention Center, Room 25 A,B,C". No reservation is required. Anyone attending the symposium will receive a free copy of Easy Articles program (http://www.synaptosoft.com/EasyArticles/. Please check out the demo of Mini Analysis Program version 5.4 now! Topics; 1. Satelite Symposium, Saturday, Nov 10, at 3:00 - 5:00 PM, San Diego. 2. Non-stationary noise analysis: obtaining single channel info from synaptic currents. 3. New and improved exponential decay fitting: up to 3 exponentials, faster fitting, R-sqr for goodness of fit. 4. ABF Utility converts more files and adds more tools. 5. New features for analyzing action potentials: Scan and adjust baseline to threshold. 6. Other bugs fixed. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Satelite Symposium, Saturday, Nov 10, at 3:00 - 5:00 PM, San Diego. Title: Analyzing Spontaneous Activities with Mini Analysis Program and Single Channel Kinetics with Channelab Location: San Diego Convention Center Room: Room 25 A,B,C Date: 11/10/00 (November 10, 2000) Time: 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm Setup: 500 people Please find more information in your Preliminary Program. The symposium will be divided into two parts. In the first part, Justin Lee will present a quick overview of Mini Analysis Program, followed by a comprehensive discourse on post-detection analyses. In the second part, Dr. Stephen Traynelis from Emory University will present the latest features of his program, the Channelab. Here is the sequence of the topics to be covered in the first part of the symposium; 1 Study of Spontaneous Activities using Mini Analysis Program 2 ABF Utility: File conversion utility 3 Peak Detection Algorithms 4 Data Conversion: ABF Utility 5 Grouping and Data Array 6 Descriptive Analyses Auto- and Cross-correlation Burst Analysis 7 Group Analysis and Curve Fitting Exponential Decay Fitting Action Potential Waveform Analysis Amperometric Peak Analysis Non-stationary Noise Analysis 8 Manipulating Graphs and Exporting Data 9 Future Directions Here is the sequence of the topics to be covered in the second part of the symposium; 1 Kinetic modeling of macroscopic data 2 Kinetic modeling of single channel data 3 Comparison of available modeling software 4 Description of modeling capabilities of ChanneLab The symposium will be held in a room for 500 people. We expect that there will be enough room for this symposium (not like last time). There is no registration required. Anyone who attends will be entitled for a free registration of our new program, Easy Articles. In case you cannot make it to the symposium but still would like to meet the programmer, Justin Lee, send us an email and he will try to arrange the time and place to meet. 2. Non-stationary noise analysis: obtaining single channel info from synaptic currents. Single channel parameters can be estimated by obtaining a variance-current relationship of noise in the decay phase of a synaptic current. By fitting the variance-current plot, one can estimate the unitary conductance, total number of channels, and probability of opening at the peak. This new feature is implemented in Group analysis and curve fitting window with an easy to use interface. After detecting and grouping the favorite synaptic currents, display the grouped events in Group Analysis window, and then press the Start button to initiate the analysis. The program will (1)display mean-difference traces, (2)display variance trace, (3)calculate variances for each amplitude bins in the decay phase of each raw trace, (4)plot the variance vs. current amplitude, and (5)fit the variance-current relationship for the best parabola, var=iI-I^2/N+Offset. These are done all automatically. The resulting fit will give the single channel parameters. The theoretical aspects of th! is! analysis will be discussed by Dr. Stephen Traynelis at the Neurosience Symposium. The availability of this easy to use non-stationary noise analysis will open up new possibilities for those who record evoked spontaneous and evoked synaptic activities. 3. New and improved exponential decay fitting: up to 3 exponentials, faster fitting, R-sqr for goodness of fit. The decay fitting in previous versions of Mini Analysis was not quite reliable and many investigators have turned to third party programs for exponential fitting. In version 5.4 of Mini Analysis Program, the exponential decay fitting has been re-worked out. Now the fitting algorithm is much faster, more reliable (converges better), allowing fittings for up to 3 exponentials. Now users have an option to fix the initial peak as the amplitude parameters in the fitting, instead of making it fit freely by the fitting algorithm. Another important addition is an option to include offset. Even though most of synaptic events are assumed to go to baseline (offset=0), some events might have a long lasting component that requires an offset for better fitting. As a measure of goodness of fit, now the fitting reports an R-squared value for each fit. The closer this value is to 1, the better fit the curve is. 4. ABF Utility converts more files and adds more tools. There has been many new features for ABF Utility program. It converts chart for windows with multiple channels. It also converts Pulse data files with multiple channel episodic data. For PTI ascii files, ABF Utility will now scale automatically. For Supserscope users, we have figured out an easy way to convert the Superscope data files (ask us for the trick). The ABF Utility also added other useful tools for manipulating existing ABF files. ABF Utiltiy now has a Digital Gaussian filter capability, allowing users to digitally filter their noisy records. If you have used Clampfit to resave their own ABF files, you must have noticed that Clampfit rescales the data file and stretches the vertical scale. This has caused some degree of problems for Mini Analysis users, specially for the Group Analysis and curve fitting. To circumvent this problem, ABF Utility now has a button to downscale an ABF file. If you encounter this problem after resaving in Clampfit, look for a button in ABF Utility that says "Downscale ABF file". You will find this button handy. 5. New features for analyzing action potentials: Scan and adjust baseline to threshold. Mini Analysis Program has been used by many people to detect spontaneous action potentials, even though it was originally developed for analyzing spontaneous synaptic activities. The program in most of cases has no problem detecting these action potentials. But in some special cases where action potentials are occurring very fast and closely together, the current detection algorithm can be not so efficient. To accommodate better for action potentials, we will be slowly adding new detection features. The initial addition in version 5.4 includes the ability to scan and adjust the baseline to threshold. The threshold for each action potential is determined by locating the maximum of third differential in the rising phase of an action potential. The vertical location of this threshold is set for baseline to determine the amplitude from this threshold. In short future, Mini Analysis will have an independent detection algorithm utilizing this threshold of an action potentia! l.! Another important addition includes the measurement and visual display of the initial slope of an action potential or EPSP in the action potential waveform analysis of Group analysis and curve fitting. 6. Bugs fixed The cross-correlation histogram was mistakenly normalized to a wrong array. Now it is correctly normalized to the reference array. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you haven't try the demo, please visit us at http://www.synaptosoft.com, download the demo, and try! *****Mini Analysis Program is a product of joint effort by all of the users. If you have any suggestions, please let us know, we will incorporate your ideas.****** For more information, visit our website at http://www.synaptosoft.com. If you want to receive the upgrade, please download the demo at http://www.synaptosoft.com/DownloadDemo.html. 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