Section 7: Interactive Paradigm Creation

This section may or may not work in the release you have received. If you try this and the program crashes or simply fails to comply, you can safely assume that it has not been implemented in your release.

Interactive Real-Time creation of functional maps is a key function of scanSTAT. Briefly, this is done by observing the subject behavior and converting it into a suitable reference paradigm for the creation of correlation statistics. In practise, we do this by convolving the time course of the behavioral responses with an estimate of the brain impulse response.

Tutorial/Demonstration - Interactive Creation of Paradigms

NOTE: This demonstration illustrates the concept, but really requires an imager for any useful functionality.

  1. If it is not already open, start scanSTAT by double-clicking the program icon
  2. Select "File -> Define Paradigm... -> Create by Key Press..."
  3. A dialog box will appear. You may enter in a TR, as used in the scan, a name for a text record of the paradigm file and whether or not to convolve the tiem course with the impulse response in order to estimate the brain response.
  4. After exploring these options, press the "Done" button.
  5. A standard File dialog window will appear, asking you for an appropriate name and location to store a record of the key-press activity.
  6. A "Key Record" window will appear. Each time that you press a key on the keyboard, note that the large box on the Key Record window tells you whether or not the key is depressed. This feature makes it easy to see at a distance what is taking place in the magnet.
  7. To clear the Key Record window, select one of the other two options (Use Cproto or Use File) from the "File -> Define Paradigm..." menu.

If you were performing real-time analysis during acquisition, KeyPress would create a paradigm file for correlational analysis based on the subject's self-reported behavior. This allows you to design experiments in which the subject determined experimental timing, such as cases when the experimental condition is not under experimenter control.

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