Zapit

Zapit is point-based (scanner-based) optostimulator system for head-fixed mouse behavioral tasks. The system can photostimulate near-simultaneously up to 20 locations on the dorsal brain surface. The software will run on a variety of hardware designs and experimental paradigms. A user-friendly MATLAB GUI handles creation of stimulus sets, scanner calibration, and alignment of stereotaxic coordinates to the sample. The experiment itself is run via a MATLAB API: using a small number of simple commands the user can initiate and stop optostimulation, and handle trial logging to disk. There is a Python wrapper for the MATLAB API and support for presenting stimuli in other programming languages.

Zapit is a collaboration between the AMF and several SWC labs. We have a bioRxiv pre-print and the project is fully available on GitHub.