dimstim
dimstim is our custom written, open source, cross-platform, visual stimulus software. It's written in Python, and uses Andrew Straw's Vision Egg Python graphics library. Vision Egg itself does all drawing to screen via OpenGL.
dimstim has precise frame-by-frame control of what happens on screen, and has been tested on 200 Hz monitors with 5 ms frame times. It allows for permutation and covariation of a wide variety of stimulus parameters, depending on stimulus type. Stimuli include manual and drifting bars and gratings, flashed bars and gratings, sparse noise, and artificial and natural scene movies. Stimulus parameters include spatial location, orientation, speed, duration, size, contrast, brightness, and spatial and temporal frequencies. Spatial parameters are specified in degrees of spatial angle, given the distance to the screen.
Stimulus parameters can be communicated on a frame-by-frame basis to an acquisition computer via a Data Translations digital output board, for simultaneous recording of stimulus timing and neuronal responses.
download
Here's a recent (as of 2010-03-26) revision, rev227:
binary distribution for Windows: dimstim-0.16.rev227.win32-py2.5.exe
source distribution, in tar.gz format: dimstim-0.16.rev227.tar.gz
To get it to run, you'll need to install a number of freely available dependencies:
The latest stable version of most of these should do fine, with some exceptions:
- The binary file is built against Python 2.5, so that's the version of Python you'll need to run it. I can also provide a binary built against Python 2.6 if you like.
Right now, dimstim requires a specific revision of VisionEgg, rev 1413, in order to run properly. This is due to a switch to using pyglet for window initialization and positioning. You can get VisionEgg rev 1413 here.
- PyOpenGL 3.x seems to have problems, so it's better to stick to the latest 2.x.