Neuroscientists Use 'Thunder' Tool to Monitor Wealth of Brain Activity

A group of neuroscientists are using a new revolutionary tool called "Thunder" to monitor brain activity, which provides large data sets at a tremendous rate - a task that was once difficult for one computer alone to handle. The technology is described in a paper published July 27 in the journal Nature Methods.

New technologies for monitoring brain activity are generating unprecedented quantities of information. That data may hold new insights into how the brain works - but only if researchers can interpret it. Until now, scientists had to distribute this wealth of data across clusters of computers in order to make sense of it all, but Thunder is like several computers in one.

Thunder, a library of tools developed by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers, is now able to analyze mass quantities of neural data, both human and non-human. Thunder is able to analyze information in a matter of minutes - data sets so large and complex that they would take days or weeks to analyze on a single computer.

"For a lot of these data sets, a single machine is just not going to cut it," lead researcher Jeremy Freeman of the HHMI's Janelia Research Campus said in a press release.

"When you record information from the brain, you don't know the best way to get the information that you need out of it. Every data set is different. You have ideas, but whether or not they generate insights is an open question until you actually apply them," added co-author Misha Ahrens.

Developers of the software have used it to analyze highly-detailed images taken of the brains of both zebrafish and mice. After using multiple imaging techniques to collect the data, researchers used Thunder to interpret it.

A newly designed microscope is able to monitor the activity of each cell in the brain of fish as the animal processes visual information.

The new system is designed to be easy to use for researchers. It's based on the Spark cluster computer framework, a project developed at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Being able to apply these analyses quickly - one after the other - is important. Speed gives a researcher more flexibility to explore and get new ideas," Ahrens explained.

Thunder is an open-source software, available for free download on the Freeman Lab website.