Cycle Based Computational Pipeline for Extracting Instantaneous Whisking Frequency

Abstract

Whisking is a rhythmic and adaptive behavior that rodents use to probe and interact with their environment, and the frequency of movement reflects both sensorimotor processing and internal brain states. A robust and traditional method of whisker frequency estimation uses power spectral analysis of whisker position spanning several cycles. To improve the temporal resolution of whisker movement, we here estimate the period for each cycle, hence indirectly extracting an instantaneous frequency. We do this using markerless estimation of whisker position and identifying the peak and trough for each cycle. The cycle period is extracted, and artifacts are rejected with a ripple exclusion validator based on peak prominence and sequential amplitude filtering. The method is compared with power spectral estimation, using the Fourier transform of a temporal window of 0.5 seconds. We find that frequency estimation using a fixed window does not capture transient variability, while the cycle by cycle method recovers higher, time-resolved frequencies. The cycle by cycle approach also reveals the expected cycle-level variability. Artifact rejection through subsequence filtering removed spurious frequencies above 30 Hz, aligning refined frequencies with established physiological bounds (4 to 28 Hz). This pipeline provides an alternative solution for real time compatible frequency estimation, which better captures temporal variation at the expense of precision in frequency estimation.