how to put output from for-loop for many subjects into one graph when they are all overwriting each other as variables?

Hello!

I have many subjects that have cortex, ventricle, and spinal cord timeseries information in their folders. I am using a for-loop to analyze each individual subject. I now want to do group analysis, and I want to put all of the timeseries in one graph. However, all the variables are currently the same for every subject, and are being overwritten during the for-loop code running. Is there an elegant way to combine all of the timeseries information without having to compeltely rewrite my code? Or a way to make each for loop have a specific detrended output with a number associated with it?

%%  adding current path and subfolders
addpath(genpath(pwd))

%defining subjects

subj = {'HCA1','HCA2','HCA3','HCA4'};  %HCPsubj list
%% loading paths and such

D = '/Users/ll/Documents/data_analysis/HCP/seventy/';
for k = 1:length(subj)
    name = subj{k};
    l = load(fullfile(D,name,'ts','lcortex_run01regPA.txt'));
    v = load(fullfile(D,name,'ts','ventricle_run01regPA.txt'));
    s = load(fullfile(D,name,'ts','spinal_run01regPA.txt'));

%% defining some variables

c_ts = l
v_ts = v
s_ts = s

%% detrend ventricle and cortex

d_v_ts = detrend(v_ts)   %detrended time series of ventricle

d_c_ts = detrend(c_ts) %detrended time series of cortex

d_s_ts = detrend(s_ts) %detrended time series of spinal cord

%% defining timeseries x axis - plotting ventricle, cortex, spinal cord -raw fmri signal

whole_ts = 1:478 %your ventricle timeseries 
ttt = whole_ts*.800 %the TR found from HCP mri_info 
figure;
ax1 = subplot(3,1,1)
hold on
plot (ttt, d_v_ts)
plot (ttt, d_c_ts)
plot (ttt, d_s_ts)
hold off
legend('ventricle','cortex','spinal cord')
sgtitle(name)
xlabel('Time')
ylabel('Raw fMRI signal')

[Stephen23]

"Is there an elegant way to combine all of the timeseries information..."

Of course: it is called indexing.

"Or a way to make each for loop have a specific detrended output with a number associated with it?"

You just described indexing.

Indexing is simple, neat, easy to debug, and very efficient. You should use indexing.

[mickey]

thank you!

so if i wanted to make an output for each forloop run that I then could out into an index, how would I do this?

Answer 1

[KALYAN ACHARJYA]

how to put output from for-loop for many subjects into one graph when they are all overwriting each other as variables?

if outputs are files/any dimension vector/any other forms, do prefer cell array

If the outputs are simple scalar (numbers), do prefer array rather than multiple variable names.