Abstract
Sleep in adult C. elegans occurs spontaneously, making timing of individual sleep/wake state transitions unpredictable. This protocol presents a closed-loop system to automatically detect sleep state transitions, trigger stimulation, and record evoked neural responses. This allows users to assess functional consequences of behavioral states in an unbiased manner and identify state-dependent neuromodulation. This closed-loop system is flexible and can be configured to detect any visible events, such as behavior patterns or optical reporters, and measure corresponding evoked neural responses. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Lawler et al. (2021).