User manual

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Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................. 1
CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 5
1.1 WinLTP Capabilities ....................................................................................................................... 5
1.2 Appropriate Equipment ................................................................................................................... 8
1.3 Overview of WinLTP – Basic LTP/LTD Experiment ...................................................................... 10
1.4 Technical Support ........................................................................................................................ 12
1.5 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... 12
1.6 Conditions of Use ......................................................................................................................... 13
CHAPTER 2 – GETTING STARTED ....................................................................................................... 16
2.1 Upgrade notice ............................................................................................................................. 16
2.2 Install WinLTP .............................................................................................................................. 16
2.3 BOTTOM LINE – WHAT SHOULD I BUY? ................................................................................... 16
2.4 Install the National Instrument PCI M- or X-Series board ............................................................. 18
2.5 Install the Axon Digidata 1320A or 1322A board .......................................................................... 31
2.6 Start WinLTP ................................................................................................................................ 33
2.7 Automatic Data Folder Creation at Start-up .................................................................................. 34
2.8 Choose the Connector Box and Recording Mode for M-,X-Series boards .................................... 37
2.9 Calibrate Data Acquisition Board When Running the First Time ................................................... 40
2.10 Connect the amplifier and stimulus isolation units to the data acquisition board ......................... 41
2.11 WinLTP is running in either the Basic, Standard or Advanced Mode .......................................... 42
2.12 Basic, Standard and Advanced Mode Capabilities ..................................................................... 48
2.13 Set the AD Gain, DataType, Sample Interval and Other Parameters .......................................... 51
2.14 Analog Filtering of the Signal Before Digitization ........................................................................ 53
2.15 Click the ‘MainProtocol’ Button to Start Stimulating and Acquiring Data ..................................... 53
2.16 Check that the Data Acquisition and Stimulation are Working Correctly ..................................... 53
2.17 Use the Windows Task Manager to check CPU and Memory Usage ......................................... 53
2.18 Ways to speed up WinLTP on slower computers ....................................................................... 56
CHAPTER 3 – ORGANIZATION OF WINLTP ......................................................................................... 58
3.1 Tabsheet and Panel Areas ........................................................................................................... 58
3.2 Menus .......................................................................................................................................... 67
3.3 Running Protocols using Run Buttons, Function Keys and Run Menus ........................................ 69
3.4 Fields – Changing Values ............................................................................................................ 70
3.5 Graphs – Changing Axis Values, Dragging, Zooming ................................................................... 70
3.6 Coding of Synaptic Waveform Detection ...................................................................................... 73
CHAPTER 4 – RUNNING A BASIC LTP EXPERIMENT .......................................................................... 74
4.1 Automatic and Manual Loading of the Protocol (*.pro) File from Disk ........................................... 74
4.3 Choosing Continuous Acquisition ................................................................................................. 75
4.4 Writing a Simple Script in the Protocol Builder – Scripting 101 ..................................................... 75
4.5 Signal Averaging, Stimulus Artifact Blanking and Low-Pass Digital Filtering ................................ 82
4.6 Setting Which Sweeps to Save to disk .......................................................................................... 90
4.7 Set Which AD Channels to Plot and Save, and Which Sweeps to Save ....................................... 90
4.8 Set the Data Acquisition Values ................................................................................................... 91
4.9 Choosing Pulse/Train Sweep Stimulation Protocols and Setting Stimulation Values .................... 92
4.10 Choosing the Analyses To Do ..................................................................................................... 99