WinLTP |
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Beta Version, 0.95b |
| William W. Anderson, Ph.D. |
| MRC Centre for Synaptic Plasticity |
| Dept of Anatomy |
| University of Bristol |
Conditions, Registration & Downloading the currently free WinLTP
Conditions, Registration & Downloading the currently free WinLTP |
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| WinLTP is now freely available, and will still continue
for many months (as a time-locked version).
The WinLTP Reanalysis program will probably always to be free. The current plan is to eventually make the WinLTP Basic Acquisition mode free (LTP Protocols with Stimulation/Acquisition Sweeps and Continuous Acquisition, but without Scripting or Capturing Spontaneous Events file saving), and sell the Advanced full mode at low cost (current estimate is £500, or approx. $900, for 5 copies). Alternatively, we eventually sell the WinLTP Acquisition program including the Basic as well as the Advanced modes at the same low cost. This to a certain extent depends on future WinLTP support, which will be decided soon. Due to many unforeseen problems, the next version of WinLTP (0.96) is not ready yet, has not been adequately tested, and therefore there is no new version with new capabilities when the time limit of 0.95 runs out. My apologies. Fortunately, all you have to do is install WinLTP095b over WinLTP095 and use as before. The WinLTP095b installation program will automatically uninstall WinLTP095. And you can use your old protocol files - no protocols need to be rewritten. Supported in part by the MRC. |
WinLTP is a stimulation, data acquisition and on-line analysis program for studying Long-Term Potentiation (LTP), Long-term Depression (LTD), and related phenomena. WinLTP runs on PCI bus computers and laptops running Windows 2000 and XP, and currently uses the National Instruments M-Series PCI data acquisition boards, and the Axon Instruments' Digidata 1320A and 1322A boards.
If you have any questions contact me at my email address: w.w.anderson@bristol.ac.uk. If I do not respond in 1 or 2 days, then please contact Stephen Fitzjohn (Stephen.Fitzjohn@bristol.ac.uk).
Axon Instruments (Molecular Devices) has discontinued selling the Digidata 1322A and instead started selling the Digidata 1440A. WinLTP will continue to support the Axon Instruments Digidata 132x series of boards. However, WinLTP does not support the Digidata 1440A, and there are no plans to do so.
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Some capabilities of the the National Instruments M-Series boards (which I think are generally at or above the Digidata 1320A and 1322A, and are fine for WinLTP) |
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16 or 32 AD channels with an aggregate 250 KHz to 1 MHz sample rate. |
| 2 or 4 analog outputs | |
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8 or 24 jitter-free digital outputs |
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| Response time delay for keyboard input has decreased from 5.0 sec for the Digidata 132x boards to 0.5 sec for the PCI M-Series boards | |
| They are relatively low cost: academic discount, in singles academic discount, units of 5 |
| PCI-6221 16 AnIn 250KHz, 2 AnOut, 8 DigOut | + CA-1000 connector box | $923 | $769 | ||||
| PCI-6229 32 AnIn 250KHz, 4 AnOut, 24 DigOut | + CA-1000 connector box | $1346 |
$1121 |
Other software that can use the M-Series boards includes National Instruments' LabView, WaveMetrics' IGOR, John Dempster's Strathclyde Electrophysiology Suite (WinWCP and WinEDR), and Silver lab's Nclamp.
| WinLTP functionality (beyond LTP Program functionality) |
| 1. | Multitasking | |
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a. LTP Program capability (repeat sweep stimulation, acquisition and analysis as described below) |
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| b. Tape recorder (Continuous Acquisition of 2 AD channels down to 25 usec sample intervals, saved to a gap-free Axon Binary File) | ||
| c. Capture Spontaneous Events and save to disk (not available yet) | ||
| 2. | Dynamic Script Programming for writing complex protocols. No programming required for LTP protocols. |
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| 3. |
Repetitive sweep sampling interval now down to 25 usec |
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| 4. |
Fast Repeat (LTD) Sweep Stimulation with no time between sweeps |
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| 5. | Patch clamp stimulation now in mV | |
| 6. | Patch Electrode Series Resistance (Rs) and Cell Resistance (Rm) now measured in Mohms | |
| 7. | More accurate Patch Electrode Series Resistance (Rs) (using lower 50 or 25 usec sample intervals) | |
| 8. | Runs in Windows 2000 and XP |
| WinLTP functionality (similar to LTP Program functionality) |
| 1. | The WinLTP records synaptic activity in extracellular, intracellular or patch clamp modes | |
| 2. |
2 AD channel acquisition |
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| 3. | Repetitive sweeps with simultaneous data acquisition (up to 1,000,000 samples in 2 AD channels at 25 usec intervals) and stimulation (using two extracellular pathway stimulation, S0 and/or S1, and epoch-like digital and intracellular analog stimulation) | |
| 4. | Basic protocols are either slow single pathway S0 stimulation, or slow alternating dual pathway (S0 then S1) stimulation | |
| 5. | Analyze all S0- and S1-evoked postsynaptic responses in both AD channels in a sweep |
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| 6. | On and off-line calculation and plotting of several waveform parameters: DC baseline, Peak Amplitude, Peak Latency, Slope, Area, Duration, Rise Time, Decay Time, Coastline, PopSpike Amplitude, PopSpike Latency, Average Amplitude, Cell resistance (Rm), and Patch electrode series resistance (Rs) | |
| 7. |
Special analyses of trains including: Analyze all peaks in a train relative to the baseline of the first pulse |
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| 8. |
Automatic blanking of stimulus artifacts to allow accurate determination of peaks and areas in a train |
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| 9. | The sweep data can be signal averaged and digitally filtered on- and off-line | |
| 10. | LTP induction can be produced by: Single train, repetitive train (theta burst stimulation), and primed burst stimulation | |
| 11. | LTD stimulation and analysis can be performed using fast repetitive sweeps (at up to 10 Hz), or a single sweep lasting several minutes for faster repetitive stimulation | |
| 12. | Save ADsweep Graph as a Windows Enhanced Metafile |
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| 13. | Automatic data folder creation at startup |
| LTP Program functionality that is not yet implemented in WinLTP functionality |
| 1. | Patch electrode series resistance (Rs) is only measured using the peak transient, not by exponential curve fitting. | |
| 2. | Primed burst stimulation (limited implementation is present) | |
| 3. | Reanalysis of general ASCII sweep files. |
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Near-Term Future additions to WinLTP |
| 1. | Better patch clamping |
| a. | Print Seal
Resistance during patching |
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| b. | Telegraphing
inputs from PatchClamp amplifier to set gain |
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| c. | Rs exponential
curve fitting |
| 2. | Improved sweep stimulation |
| a. | Five extracellular stimulation outputs, S0 to S4 (currently two, S0 and S1) | ||
| b. | Extracellular stimulation with many sequential pulses and/or trains | ||
| c. | Intracellular stimulation with trains |
| 3. | Five Pulse (P0 to P4) and five Train (T0 to T4) Stimulation Sweeps (currently two, P0 and P1, and two, T0 and T1) | |
| 4. | Five AD channels (at down to 25 usec sample intervals) | |
| 5. | Patch clamping with 2 to 4 simultaneous patch clamp electrodes | |
| 6. | Detection and analysis of spontaneous events |
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WinLTP requirements |
| 1. | For Digidata 132x boards, a PCI bus computer or laptop computer (3 GHz or higher processor recommended) | |
| For M-Series boards, PCI bus computer with at least a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 processor (e.g. with hyperthreading, the faster the better) | ||
| 2. | For Digidata 132x boards, Windows 2000 or XP | |
| For M-Series boards, Windows XP (for hyperthreading) | ||
| 3. | 1024 MB of memory recomended (256 MB minimum) | |
| 4. | 1280x1024 pixel monitor recommended (1024x768 minimum) |
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| 5. | Data acquisition boards (National Instruments M-Series PCI board PCI-6221, PCI-6229, PCI-6251 and PCI-6259, or Axon Instruments' Digidata 1320A and 1322A) |
Updated Sept 11, 2007.
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