Figure 1. BehaviorDEPOT is a general-purpose behavioral analysis software comprising six modules.
The Experiment Module is a MATLAB application with a graphical interface that allows users to design and run fear conditioning experiments. The software uses Arduinos to interface with commercially available hardware (e.g. shockers and lasers) to control stimuli. The Analysis Module imports keypoint tracking data, calculates postural and kinematic metrics, detects behaviors, and analyzes the results of behavior experiments. Four additional modules help users develop custom heuristics. The Inter-Rater Module compares human annotations, helping researchers settle on ‘ground truth’ definitions of behavior. These human definitions serve as reference data for behavioral detection heuristics. The data exploration module identifies features of movement with the highest predictive value for specific behaviors. The optimization module identifies combinations of feature thresholds that maximize behavioral detection. The validation module reports the accuracy of heuristics.
Figure 1—figure supplement 1. Example arrangement of Arduino interface between computer, fear conditioning, and optogenetics hardware.
