SleepMat: A New Behavioral Analysis Software Program for Sleep and Circadian Rhythms

Drosophila is a premier model for the study of circadian rhythms and sleep, revealing molecular mechanisms that are conserved with vertebrates, including humans. The Drosophila Activity Monitoring (DAM) system has been employed for automated, high throughput analyses, enabling measures of a wide range of measures of circadian and sleep, including period, rhythmicity, anticipation, sleep amount, bout length, and bout number. Yet there are no publicly available programs that capture the full breadth of these measures. Here we develop a new program SleepMat that analyzes a uniquely broader range of circadian and sleep parameters. The program is built on a Matlab platform, employs an easy-to-use graphic user interface, and is highly flexible to customize data inputs. This program will enable a user-friendly high throughput analysis of a broad range of sleep and circadian parameters that can be coupled to the power of Drosophila genetics.