Where to check the position of the manipulator during the session

[bruno-f-cruz]

I am looking at some videos provided by the ephys team, and I need to know when, aligned to the video frames, the position of the manipulator changes during the session. I can't seem to find this information in any of the raw data streams. Can someone help out?

@XX-Yin @jsiegle @alexpiet ?

[XX-Yin]

@bruno-f-cruz In the behavior NWB trial data, the three columns lickspout_position_x, lickspout_position_y, and lickspout_position_z store the lickspout position information. These are single position values recorded at the end of each trial; they do not capture the precise timing of movements and do not include continuous trajectories if multiple movements occur within a trial. Therefore, within a given trial, you can only determine the start and end positions of the lickspout and whether any movement occurred during that trial.

[bruno-f-cruz]

I only want to have a timestamp whenever the motor was moved so I can know where to "segment" the video. What assumptions can I make about this table? For instance, is the manipulator guaranteed to be in the same position from trial start to trial end? Or can it move during the trial at any point?

[XX-Yin]

The manipulator can be moved at any point during the trial. And we don't store the exact timing of movement.

The safest approach is to use lickspout_position_x, lickspout_position_y, and lickspout_position_z to determine whether any movement occurred within that trial, while the trial timing can be obtained from start_time and stop_time.