An estimator of the phase of a signal.
The result is either in radians or degrees according to the output parameter.
The component will estimate the phase for any signal, but hte results are probably only meaningful for pleriodic signals. It records the times and amplitudes of minima and maxima, and keeps a running estimate of the time between successive minima [maxima] which it uses as the period. The min to max distance is also recorded, giving it two ways to estimate a phase: either form the time since the last minima [maxima] compared to the estimated period, or form the curerent amplitude compared to the estimated min and max.
Which of these strategies is used depends on the sync parameter and the method parameter. For a sinusoidal signal all possibilities will agree. For a signal with sharp maxima and wide or noisy minima (eg some spiking cells) it may be best to sync on the maxima because these are better defined. For a spiking signal, the choice of method depends on what you want - a measure of progress through the inter-spike interval, or a measure of the progress from max to min and back again. In the case of a spiking cell, the amplitude method would quickly move through all phase from 0 to 180 during the repolarization from the spike to the trough of the AHP and then gradually move through another quarter cycle or so as the cell returns to threshold, and then spped through the rest during the spike.