Procedure for Designing a Behavioral Experiment

Designing a new Behavioral experiment

Creating a new Behavioral experiment requires a few components created within Matlab and TDT RPvds software. While the exact order of creation you choose to take is up to preference, the recommended procedure begins with OpenEx and RPvds circuit design followed by EPsych GUIs in Matlab. Ultimately, a back-and-forth between RPvds and EPsych is used to finalize experimental design.

All behavioral experiments are based around timing macros. Details on the use of included behavioral macros can be found here. While it is recommended to use these macros if they fit your needs (or for just learning), you can certainly create your own as long as a few requirements are met. You are welcome to look into existing timing macros, such as ep_2AFC or ep_StimDetect, by placing the macro in your circuit, right-clicking the macro, and selecting "Edit File on Disk".
Required parameters for custom timing macros:

#RespCode~1 - Output of state machine that is zero (0) unless a trial has been completed.
#TrigState~1 - Logical output linked to the state of trial. Should be high (true) during the trial and low (false) otherwise.
#ResetTrig~1 - Logical input to reset the state machine and any other components in the circuit. Called after a trial has been completed and all values have been read from the circuit.
#NewTrial~1 - Logical input to indicate that all parameters have been updated for the next trial.
#TrialNum~1 - A simple counter component that gets incremented on each trial (optional)

Each of the above parameters begin with a # and end with a ~1. The 1 should be the index of the behavioral box that is assigned to the subject. If there is only one subject, then this will be 1. If you are running multiple subjects, then you should have a parameter tag for each subject. An example of a programmatic way to do this is implemented in the behavioral macros included with this project.