MindControl is a software tool that allows a researcher to utilize optogenetics to manipulate neural activity in a freely moving worm for behavioral neuroscience experiments. MindControl analyzes a video stream of a swimming nematode and in real time it generates an illumination pattern that targets specific neurons or cells within the worm. The software can output these patterns to a digital micrommirror device in a closed loop. In this way, a researcher can train arbitrary pulses of laser light only on specific cells or neurons of a worm as it moves. The software records detailed information about the worm's position, orientation and the state of the system for every frame of the video stream. This data is recorded in a human- and computer- readable YAML file. The software optionally also outputs raw and annotated video streams for later analysis. The MindControl-analysis software suite generates quantitative graphs and figures of nematode behavior based on the output from MindControl.
MindControl is the software component of [CoLBeRT] 4 (Controlling Locomotion and Behavior in Real-Time) as described in Leifer, A.M., Fang-Yen, C., Gershow, M., Alkema, M., Samuel, A.D.T., "Optogenetic manipulation of neural activity in freely moving Caenorhabditis elegans," Nature Methods, in press (2010).
MindControl is written by Andrew Leifer with help from Marc Gershow. It is a product of the Samuel Lab in the Department of Physics and the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University.
The most up to date version of the MindControl software will always be available at [http://github.com/samuellab/mindcontrol] 9
With the exception of certain libraries in the 3rdPartyLibs/ folder, all of MindControl is released under the GNU Public License. This means you are free to copy, modify and redistribute this software.
If you use any portion of this code or software in your research, please cite:
Leifer, A.M., Fang-Yen, C., Gershow, M., Alkema, M., Samuel, A.D.T., "Optogenetic manipulation of neural activity in freely moving Caenorhabditis elegans," Nature Methods, in press (2010).
The software was developed on Intel hardware running Windows XP. It was compiled with the MinGW gcc compiler. The software has different requirements depending on whether you plan to compile the code, or run an existing pre-compiled binary. Moreover, there are different compile targets and executables for different hardware environments. For example, to control a micromirror device requires compiling an executable that links to commercial software libraries included with the micromirror device.
The quickest way to get a feel for the software is to run the VritualMC.exe pre-built executable which is packaged in a zip file and availabe for download at http://github.com/downloads/samuellab/mindcontrol/MindControlDEMO.zip VirtualMC.exe will run on any Windows XP system and requires only the included OpenCV 1.1 run-time libraries. No special hardware is required. Follow the README in the zip.
To utilize camera or micromirror hardware functionality, you will need to compile the software from source.
The code compiles under Windows XP. At a minimum it requires:
mingw- OpenCV 1.1
msysgitmakeawk
To compile any of the calibration routines additionally requires:
MATLAB
To compile an executable that uses a camera and DLP requires
- BitFlow framegrabber SDK
- VIALUX ALP Basic DLP USB SDK
See the makefile for more details about the different compile targets.
Please contact Andrew Leifer, leifer (at) fas (dot) harvard.edu with questions or feedback.