Audiologists may be interested in Presentation, a free program for
stimulus delivery and experimental control that can run on any
standard Windows PC (95/98/ME/2000/XP). Presentation is designed for
experiments using fMRI, ERP/MEG, TMS, single unit recording, animal
conditioning, psychophysics, eye movement recordings, and reaction
time methods. It uses DirectX computer gaming technology to provide
precise and realistic stimulation. It delivers visual and multimodal
video animations with precise frame control at all video refresh rates
and monitors responses with sub-ms precision without special hardware.
Presentation can control up to four independent, simultaneous sound
sources and deliver multimodal stimuli. To assure accuracy, timing
precision is verified for each stimulus and response event.
Presentation can be controlled by writing ASCII text scenarios or by
using a simple programming language that allows real-time adaptive
program control based on the subject's performance and that supports
the randomization of stimulus delivery. Presentation can communicate
with other devices through the parallel and serial ports, and can
monitor responses from keyboard, mouse, joystick and special response
devices. It supports dual monitor control. Presentation has attracted
more than 2,500 registered users. It will be distributed for free
until 2004. It can be downloaded at neurobs.com.
