Free software for stimulus delivery and experimental control

["David L. Woods" <dlwoods@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Auditory list members may be interested in the new release of Presentation,
a free program for stimulus delivery and experimental control for
experiments using fMRI, ERP/MEG, TMS, single unit recording, animal
conditioning, psychophysics and reaction time methods. Presentation can
control up to four independent, simultaneous sound sources.  It delivers
visual and/or multimodal stimuli and video animations with precise frame
control at all video refresh rates and monitors responses with sub-ms
precision without special hardware. To assure experimental accuracy, timing
precision is verified for each stimulus and response event. Version 0.47
also incorporates the following enhancements relative to version 0.43: (1)
Support for serial and parallel port input and output on Windows 2000/XP;
(2) Mouse and joystick position monitoring; (3) New Presentation Control
Language (PCL) features including subroutines, access to response data and
access to stimulus data; (4) Experimenter feedback features including a
text output window, a parameter monitoring window, and a text display
window; (5) A new web-based licensing scheme; and (6) a new online user
forum for technical support.

Benchmark testing shows that a temporal precision of Presentation on
Windows 95/98/ME/2000 or XP approaches the precision of dedicated
hardware.  For example, benchmark testing of continuous animations and
concurrent sound delivery on a Windows2000 PC with a 900 MHz Athlon CPU
showed that temporal imprecision exceeded 1.0 ms for only 2.09 sec of a
9.52 hr test. Presentation will be distributed for free until 2004.  More
than 2,580 individual researchers have installed Presentation more than
5,400 times. Give it a try!

Version 0.47 and demos are available at www.neurobs.com.

David L. Woods, Professor of Neurology, Dept. of Neurology,UC Davis,
Chief, Clinical Neurophysiology and Chief, Research fMRI imaging,
Neurology Service (127E), VA-NCHCS, 150 Muir Rd., Martinez, CA 94553
Tel (925) 372-2571, Fax (925) 229-2315 Email:dlwoods@ucdavis.edu
Publications: http://marva4.ebire.org/hcnlab