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The BCI Briefing

Signal processing · Processing

Kilosort

Fast spike sorting with drift correction for high-density probes.

  • Active
  • Widely used
  • Specialized
github.com/MouseLand/Kilosort (opens in a new tab)Documentation (opens in a new tab)

What problem does it solve?

Assigning spikes to neurons across hundreds of channels, while the probe moves relative to tissue.

Who is it for?

High-density electrophysiology labs

At a glance

Primary use
Signal processing
Licence
GPL-3.0 · copyleft or unspecified
Language
Python
Current release
v4.1.3, published 30 Dec 2025
Development activity
Last commit 25 Sep 2026 · repository created 4 May 2018
Maintainers
MouseLand (HHMI Janelia)
GitHub stars
631 as of 3 Oct 2026

Repository facts are a snapshot read from the GitHub API on 3 Oct 2026; they are reported as found, not scored.

Supported modalities and use

Modalities

Real-time capability

Primarily for offline analysis

Common use cases

  • Spike sorting
  • Drift correction

How it fits into a BCI stack

  1. Hardware

    2 tools

  2. Acquisition

    3 tools

  3. Streaming

    3 tools

  4. Processing

    Kilosort

  5. Decoding

    4 tools

  6. Applications

    2 tools

  7. Data & standards

    3 tools

Sources

  1. 01

    github.com/MouseLand/Kilosort (opens in a new tab)

    Open-source repositoryGitHubChecked against source 3 Oct 2026

    Repository metadata read from the GitHub API.