Neuroscience Graphics with TikZ

Question

Does anyone know of packages for displaying neuroscience schematics with tikz? For example, I would like to place a raster plot next to the diagram of a Markov process to help explain how Markov models could be used to simulate the firing of neurons.

I know that I could do this by including an image of neural activity in the tikz picture. But, I wondered if there was a solution that could only use tikz.

Below is the, admittedly, amateurish, version I made in PPT. The raster plot refers to the horizontal lines of ticks. Each tick is the same and marks where a neuron fired.

I know how to use the automata library in tikz to make the state diagram. I wondered if there was an easier way to draw many horizontal lines than the brute force approach with a for loop.

Sample neural data (times in ms that a neuron fired) for 50 ms:

 2,10,12,14,15,20,25,34,35,48, 49

Answer 1

For the neuron activity part:

Code

\documentclass[tikz,border=2mm]{standalone}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows}
\usepackage{xifthen}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
%\pgfmathsetseed{42}% or some other number
\foreach \y [count=\c] in {-0.5,-1,...,-2.5}
    {   \node[right] at (15.2,\y+0.1) {\scriptsize Subject \c};
        \foreach \x in {1,...,300}
        {   \pgfmathtruncatemacro{\drawbool}{rand-0.7 > 0 ? 1 : 0}
            \ifthenelse{\drawbool=1}
                {   \fill (\x/20,\y) rectangle (\x/20+0.05,\y+0.3);}
                {}
        }
    }

    \draw[-stealth] (0,0) -- (15.5,0);
    \node[right] at (15.5,0.2) {t in ms};
    \foreach \x [evaluate=\x as \v using int(20*\x)] in {0,...,15}
    {   \draw (\x,-0.05) -- (\x,0.05) node[above] {\v};
    }
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

Result