Abstract
Setting up an experiment in behavioral neuroscience is a complex process that is often managed with ad hoc solutions. To streamline this process, we developed Rigbox, a high-performance, open-source software toolbox that facilitates a modular approach to designing experiments (https://github.com/cortex-lab/Rigbox). Rigbox simplifies hardware input-output, time aligns datastreams from multiple sources, communicates with remote databases, and implements visual and auditory stimuli presentation. Its main submodule, Signals, allows intuitive programming of behavioral tasks. Here we illustrate its function with the following two interactive examples: a human psychophysics experiment, and the game of Pong. We give an overview of running experiments in Rigbox, provide benchmarks, and conclude with a discussion on the extensibility of the software and comparisons with similar toolboxes. Rigbox runs in MATLAB, with Java components to handle network communication, and a C library to boost performance.
Footnotes
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
This work was funded by the Medical Research Council (Doctoral Training Award to C.P.B.), the Royal Society (Newton International Fellowship to A.J.P.), EMBO (Fellowship to A.J.P.), the Human Frontier Science Program (Fellowship to A.J.P.), and the Wellcome Trust (Grant 205093 to M.C. and K.D.H.). M.C. holds the GlaxoSmithKline/Fight for Sight Chair in Visual Neuroscience, University College London.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.