| name | neurokit |
| description | Comprehensive biosignal processing for ECG/PPG/EEG/EDA/RSP/EMG/EOG; use when you need to clean, segment, and extract physiological features for HRV, event-related responses, complexity metrics, or multimodal psychophysiology pipelines. |
| license | MIT |
| author | AIPOCH |
Source: https://github.com/aipoch/medical-research-skills
When to Use
Use this skill when you need to:
- Run end-to-end ECG/PPG pipelines (cleaning → peak detection → feature extraction) for cardiovascular monitoring and HRV.
- Compute HRV metrics (time/frequency/nonlinear) for autonomic nervous system assessment in resting-state or continuous recordings.
- Analyze EEG for band power, microstates, and complexity measures in cognitive/neuroscience experiments.
- Decompose EDA into tonic/phasic components and quantify SCRs for arousal/stress and psychophysiological paradigms.
- Perform multimodal biosignal processing (e.g., ECG + RSP + EDA + EMG) with unified outputs for integrated analyses.
Reference docs (if available in this skill package): references/ecg_cardiac.md, references/hrv.md, references/eeg.md, references/eda.md, references/rsp.md, references/emg.md, references/eog.md, references/signal_processing.md, references/complexity.md, references/epochs_events.md, references/bio_module.md.
Key Features
- Cardiac (ECG/PPG): cleaning, R-peak detection, delineation, quality assessment, ECG-derived respiration, pulse analysis.
- HRV: comprehensive indices across time, frequency, and nonlinear domains; RSA and advanced metrics (e.g., RQA where applicable).
- EEG: band power, channel utilities, microstate segmentation, and integration patterns commonly used with MNE workflows.
- EDA: tonic/phasic decomposition, SCR detection, sympathetic indices, and event-related EDA analysis.
- Respiration (RSP): breathing rate, variability (RRV), and respiratory volume per time (RVT) style features.
- EMG/EOG: EMG activation/amplitude processing; EOG blink and eye-movement feature extraction.
- General utilities: filtering, peak finding, PSD estimation, resampling/interpolation, and synchronization helpers.
- Event-related analysis: event finding, epoching, baseline correction, and averaging across trials.
- Multimodal integration:
bio_process() / bio_analyze() for consistent multi-signal pipelines.
Dependencies
neurokit2 (latest; install via pip/uv)
- Python 3.x environment (version depends on your runtime)
Installation:
uv pip install neurokit2
Development version:
uv pip install https://github.com/neuropsychology/NeuroKit/zipball/dev
Example Usage
A complete, runnable example that simulates signals, processes them, computes features, and performs event-related epoching:
import neurokit2 as nk
import numpy as np
sampling_rate = 1000
duration = 60
ecg = nk.ecg_simulate(duration=duration, sampling_rate=sampling_rate, heart_rate=70)
rsp = nk.rsp_simulate(duration=duration, sampling_rate=sampling_rate, respiratory_rate=15)
eda = nk.eda_simulate(duration=duration, sampling_rate=sampling_rate, scr_number=8)
trigger = np.zeros(len(ecg))
event_times_s = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50]
for t in event_times_s:
trigger[int(t * sampling_rate)] = 1.0
ecg_signals, ecg_info = nk.ecg_process(ecg, sampling_rate=sampling_rate)
rpeaks = ecg_info["ECG_R_Peaks"]
hrv = nk.hrv(rpeaks, sampling_rate=sampling_rate)
bio_signals, bio_info = nk.bio_process(
ecg=ecg,
rsp=rsp,
eda=eda,
sampling_rate=sampling_rate
)
bio_results = nk.bio_analyze(bio_signals, sampling_rate=sampling_rate)
events = nk.events_find(trigger, threshold=0.5)
epochs = nk.epochs_create(
bio_signals,
events,
sampling_rate=sampling_rate,
epochs_start=-0.5,
epochs_end=2.0
)
grand_average = nk.epochs_average(epochs)
()
(hrv.iloc[:, :].())
(, (bio_results.keys())[:])
(, grand_average.shape)
Implementation Details
Processing pipelines (typical pattern)
Most modalities follow a consistent structure:
*_process(signal, sampling_rate=...)
Produces a cleaned signal plus intermediate channels (e.g., peaks, phases) and an info dict with indices/metadata.
*_analyze(processed_signals, sampling_rate=...)
Computes summary features and automatically selects an analysis mode based on recording length.
Examples:
- ECG:
ecg_process() → ecg_analyze() → hrv()
- EDA:
eda_process() → eda_analyze()
- RSP:
rsp_process() → rsp_rrv() / rsp_rvt()
Analysis mode selection (event-related vs interval-related)
Many *_analyze() functions implicitly switch modes based on data duration:
- Event-related (short segments; commonly < ~10 s): stimulus-locked responses, epoch-based summaries.
- Interval-related (longer recordings; commonly ≥ ~10 s): continuous/resting summaries (e.g., HRV over a window).
If you need explicit event-related workflows, use:
events_find() to detect markers
epochs_create() to segment around events
epochs_average() (and modality-specific *_eventrelated() where applicable)
HRV domains and inputs
HRV functions typically require R-peak indices (sample positions) and often a sampling_rate:
- Time-domain: e.g., SDNN, RMSSD, pNN50
- Frequency-domain: band powers/ratios (requires sampling rate and appropriate interpolation assumptions)
- Nonlinear: Poincaré (SD1/SD2), entropy/fractal-style measures
Common calls:
nk.hrv(peaks, sampling_rate=...) (all-in-one)
nk.hrv_time(peaks), nk.hrv_frequency(peaks, sampling_rate=...), nk.hrv_nonlinear(peaks, sampling_rate=...)
Filtering and spectral estimation
General utilities (see references/signal_processing.md) typically expose parameters such as:
sampling_rate
- cutoff frequencies (
lowcut, highcut)
- method-specific options (e.g., filter order/type)
Example:
filtered = nk.signal_filter(x, sampling_rate=1000, lowcut=0.5, highcut=40)
psd = nk.signal_psd(filtered, sampling_rate=1000)
Complexity/entropy measures
Complexity functions (see references/complexity.md) provide:
- Entropy families (approximate, sample, permutation, multiscale, etc.)
- Fractal/DFA variants
- Nonlinear dynamics metrics (e.g., Lyapunov-style measures where supported)
Example:
indices = nk.complexity(x, sampling_rate=1000)
apen = nk.entropy_approximate(x)
dfa = nk.fractal_dfa(x)