A software package for event related potential experiments

All too frequently, researchers find that experimental designs are dictated by procedures implemented by the available equipment rather than by the questions to be answered. Event related potential experiments are limited by equipment which restricts the type and number of stimuli which can be presented and the length, number, and type of averages which can be computed. A software package was developed for event related potential experiments which provides a high degree of flexibility in designing the stimulus presentation protocol and the averages which can be computed. The package includes a set of user friendly programs for constructing complicated stimulus presentation sequences. In order not to restrict the researcher to a set of predetermined averages computed at the time the experiment is conducted, the EEG data is digitized and stored continuously without regard to times of stimulus presentation. Averages are computed from the continuous EEG data by a separate averaging program which takes as input a table of starting times of the segments to be averaged. The software package is currently in use at Dr. Rohrbaugh's laboratory for a series of complicated event related potential experiments.