A python code for maximum likelihood estimation of the location and scale parameters of the truncated normal distribution

Abstract

Extracellular neural recordings obtained from chronically implanted microelectrode arrays are widely used in behavioral neurophysiology and invasive brain-machine interfaces. After the raw recordings are band-pass filtered within a frequency band suitable for spike detection, spikes are often detected by amplitude thresholding. Developing principled methods for computing amplitude thresholds is an active research area. 'Truncation thresholds' are a pair of amplitude thresholds that are computed using a recently proposed algorithm. As part of an effort that aims to integrate this algorithm into a real-Time data acquisition and spike detection system, here we present a Python code for maximum likelihood estimation of the location and scale parameters of the truncated Normal distribution, which is one of the steps involved in the computation of truncation thresholds.