Toothy: an interactive platform for dentate spike curation

Abstract

Dentate spikes (DSs) are hippocampal population events that occur during low-arousal states, defined by large-amplitude positive voltage peaks recorded in the hilus of the dentate gyrus (DG). DSs can be classified into two types (DS1 and DS2), with DS2 linked to transient increases in arousal, brain-wide neural activation, and functional relevance for memory encoding. Despite growing interest in their physiological and functional properties, no standardized framework exists for detecting and classifying DSs. We present Toothy, an open-source tool for DS detection and classification in large-scale electrophysiological recordings. Toothy offers a modular and interactive workflow comprising three key steps: (1) ingestion and preprocessing of local field potential (LFP) recordings, (2) detection of hippocampal population events, and (3) classification of DS types using peri-event current source density (CSD) profiles. To support both flexibility and reproducibility, features include compatibility with multiple recording formats, customizable processing parameters, interactive event review tools, and comprehensive logging of event detection and classification parameters. In addition to DS detection, Toothy can also detect sharp wave-ripples (SPW-Rs; an oscillatory population event recorded in the CA1 region), enabling comparative analysis between DSs and SPW-Rs. Toothy provides a standardized, reproducible pipeline for DS detection and classification, advancing broader efforts towards investigating hippocampal dynamics across diverse settings.