To support the International Brain Laboratory’s large-scale effort in brain-wide electrophysiology, this project documents and refines a robust, standardized spike sorting pipeline tailored to over a thousand Neuropixels recordings collected across multiple labs. As data volume and diversity grew, earlier processing approaches revealed inconsistencies in spike sorting outcomes. In response, the team developed a modular, reproducible workflow that includes quality control tools at each stage, enabling researchers to visualize, score, and troubleshoot sorting performance systematically.

This pipeline, openly available through the ibl-sorter repository, improves the reliability and comparability of spike sorting across heterogeneous datasets and labs. It represents a critical piece of technical infrastructure for brain-wide electrophysiology, ensuring that downstream analyses rest on a consistent foundation. By documenting known limitations and proposing areas for future improvement, the project not only advances IBL’s scientific goals but also contributes to the broader neuroscience community’s efforts to make high-density electrophysiology more scalable, transparent, and reproducible.