Analysis of Sleep and Circadian Rhythms from Drosophila Activity-Monitoring Data Using SCAMP

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Neuroscience
• Chronobiology
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Sleep is crucial for multicellular animals, yet its regulation and functions are not fully understood.
• The fruit fly, *Drosophila melanogaster*, is a key model organism for studying sleep and circadian rhythms.
• Analysis of *Drosophila* activity monitor (DAM) data is vital but often limited by existing software.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel, user-friendly MATLAB software package called SCAMP (Sleep and Circadian Analysis MATLAB Program).
• To provide a comprehensive tool for analyzing sleep and circadian rhythm data from DAMs.
• To enable analysis of data from multibeam DAM5Ms for positional preference determination.

Main Methods:

• Development and application of the SCAMP MATLAB program for analyzing DAM data.
• Utilizing beam break counts from *Drosophila* Activity Monitors (DAMs) as input.
• Incorporating analysis for both sleep metrics and circadian rhythms, including positional preference.

Main Results:

• SCAMP offers a user-friendly interface for analyzing DAM-based sleep and circadian rhythm data.
• The software generates graphical outputs and spreadsheets for further statistical analysis.
• SCAMP is the first published software capable of analyzing multibeam DAM5M data, enabling positional preference analysis.

Conclusions:

• SCAMP provides an accessible and powerful method for analyzing *Drosophila* sleep and circadian data.
• This tool addresses limitations of existing software, improving the quality of extracted metrics.
• The ability to analyze positional preference expands the scope of research using DAM technology.