Method for Robust Spike Sorting with Overlap Decomposition

Abstract — Spike sorting is the mandatory first step in an-alyzing multi-unit recording signals for studying information processing mechanisms within the nervous system. Extra-cellular recordings usually contain overlapped spikes produced by a number of neurons adjacent to the electrode, together with background noise having unknown properties. In the present study, a robust method to deal with these problems is proposed. The method employs an automatic overlap decomposition tech-nique based on the relaxation (RELAX) algorithm that requires simple fast Fourier transforms (FFT’s). The performance of the presented system was compared with that of a previously published method and tested at various signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) levels based on synthetic data that were generated from real data. I