Improving documentation for resolution attribute in the Units table (#666)

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: Ryan Ly <310197+rly@users.noreply.github.com>

Author: 3 people

core/nwb.misc.yaml

@@ -199,10 +199,11 @@ groups:
     attributes:
     - name: resolution
       dtype: float64
-      doc: The smallest possible difference between two spike times. Usually 1 divided by the acquisition sampling rate
-        from which spike times were extracted, but could be larger if the acquisition time series was downsampled or
-        smaller if the acquisition time series was smoothed/interpolated and it is possible for the spike time to be
-        between samples.
+      doc: The temporal resolution of the spike times, in seconds. This is typically the sampling period (1/sampling_rate)
+        of the acquisition data from which spikes were extracted. If the acquisition data was downsampled before
+        spike sorting, the resolution should be based on the downsampled sampling rate (lower sampling rate, larger resolution value). If interpolation
+        was applied during spike sorting, then spike times may fall between samples of the acquisition data, so the
+        resolution should be the interpolation step size (higher sampling rate, smaller resolution value).
       required: false
   - name: obs_intervals_index
     neurodata_type_inc: VectorIndex

docs/format/source/format_release_notes.rst

@@ -16,8 +16,10 @@ Minor changes
   that are typically used together for analysis, such as spike sorting. (#659)
 - Specified that units for ``ElectrodesTable`` coordinate fields (``x``, ``y``, ``z``, ``rel_x``, ``rel_y``, ``rel_z``)
   should be in microns. (#658)
-- Expanded documentation for the ``Subject`` 'age' dataset, including details on ISO 8601 Duration format and 
+- Expanded documentation for the ``Subject`` 'age' dataset, including details on ISO 8601 Duration format and
   age range representation.
+- Improved documentation of ``Units.spike_times.resolution`` to clarify that it represents the temporal resolution
+  (sampling period) of the spike times. (#666)
 
 2.9.0 (June 26, 2025)
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