Hello everyone,

I am currently measuring EPSCs from Fast Spiking Interneurons (preferably basket cells) in the hippocampal CA3 region of Wistar rats in whole cell patch clamp configuration. My approach includes evoked EPSCs which I measure every 10 seconds and then have the rest of time to record spontaneous EPSCs. I now have a number of successful recordings, but however still don't really know what to do with them. Analysis of eEPSCs is easily done, but spontaneous events are a different story.

When I recorded pyramidal cells in the same region, I used clampfit's event detection with a template search, which was not perfect but ok for the purpose. I had to accept or reject EPSCs manually as I only wanted to analyse single, separated events. However, the frequency of events in fast spiking interneurons is a lot higher, around 200 Hz, so I see a lot of compound events with multiple peaks. This makes it difficult to automatise event detection, but also means an incredibly high number of events to accept or reject.

Are there any recommendations on how to analyse these events and solve the problem of superposition of these events?

I know that there are always a lot of questions on software, but are there any new recommendations on software or tools for event detection? I know clampfit and miniAnalysis which is not distributed anymore. Are there MATLAB or python toolboxes available for event detection?

Thanks a lot!