title: A flexible software tool for temporally-precise behavioral control in Matlab.
abstract: Systems and cognitive neuroscience depend on carefully designed and precisely implemented behavioral tasks to elicit the neural phenomena of interest. To facilitate this process, we have developed a software system that allows for the straightforward coding and temporally-reliable execution of these tasks in Matlab. We find that, in most cases, millisecond accuracy is attainable, and those instances in which it is not are usually related to predictable, programmed events. In this report, we describe the design of our system, benchmark its performance in a real-world setting, and describe some key features.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, USA. wfasaad@alum.mit.edu
authors.forename: Wael F
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Asaad
authors.forename: Emad N
authors.initials: EN
authors.lastname: Eskandar
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface