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Does anyone know of packages for displaying neuroscience schematics with tikz? For example, I would like to place a raster plot next to the diagram of a Markov process to help explain how Markov models could be used to simulate the firing of neurons.

I know that I could do this by including an image of neural activity in the tikz picture. But, I wondered if there was a solution that could only use tikz.

Below is the, admittedly, amateurish, version I made in PPT. The raster plot refers to the horizontal lines of ticks. Each tick is the same and marks where a neuron fired.

I know how to use the automata library in tikz to make the state diagram. I wondered if there was an easier way to draw many horizontal lines than the brute force approach with a for loop.

Sketch of slide combining raster plots and Markov chain

Sample neural data (times in ms that a neuron fired) for 50 ms:

 2,10,12,14,15,20,25,34,35,48, 49
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Can you please provide (a link to) an image of the kind of drawing you would like to do? –  Gonzalo Medina Sep 22 '12 at 21:47
Could you provide some sample "neuron firing" data? Otherwise random numbers it is. The color represents intensity? (There are lines of different color: black, orange, red) –  Tom Bombadil Sep 23 '12 at 11:48
Random numbers are fine. Most simulations use a Poisson process with a rate of 10. I've edited to provide some example times though. There should only be one color-black. The rasters are pasted from another program into PPT and the coloring is an artifact when two black lines are really close together. –  mac389 Sep 23 '12 at 11:58
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1 Answer

up vote 10 down vote accepted

For the neuron activity part:




%\pgfmathsetseed{42}% or some other number
\foreach \y [count=\c] in {-0.5,-1,...,-2.5}
    {   \node[right] at (15.2,\y+0.1) {\scriptsize Subject \c};
        \foreach \x in {1,...,300}
        {   \pgfmathtruncatemacro{\drawbool}{rand-0.7 > 0 ? 1 : 0}
                {   \fill (\x/20,\y) rectangle (\x/20+0.05,\y+0.3);}

    \draw[-stealth] (0,0) -- (15.5,0);
    \node[right] at (15.5,0.2) {t in ms};
    \foreach \x [evaluate=\x as \v using int(20*\x)] in {0,...,15}
    {   \draw (\x,-0.05) -- (\x,0.05) node[above] {\v};



enter image description here

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That's beautiful. –  mac389 Sep 23 '12 at 12:45
How would I position the state diagram and the raster plot in the same tikz picture? –  mac389 Sep 23 '12 at 12:46
Just take the state diagram commands and put them in a shifted scope: \begin{scope}[shift={(x,y)}] <draw commands> \end{scope} –  Tom Bombadil Sep 23 '12 at 12:49
@Ahmed Musa: It's random numbers, so they are different after each compile. To make them stay constant, add \pgfmatsetseed{<number>} before the first foreach. I added it in the answer. –  Tom Bombadil Sep 23 '12 at 21:53
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