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* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kutz{at}biocfarm.unibo.it.
A new method is presented based on trinary logic able to check the state of different control variables and synchronously record the physiological data and behavioral data of behaving animals and humans. The basic information structure of the method is a time-interval of defined maximum duration, called time-slice, during which the supervisor system periodically checks the status of a specific subset of input channels. An experimental condition is a sequence of time-slices subsequently executed according to the final status of the previous time-slice. The proposed method implements in its data structure the possibility to branch like an if-else cascade and the possibility to repeat parts of it recursively like the while-loop. Therefore, its data structure contains the most basic control structures of programming languages. The method was implemented using a real-time version of LabVIEW programming environment to program and control our experimental set-up. Using this supervision system, we synchronously record 4 analog data channels at 500Hz (including eye-movements) and the time-stamps of up to 6 neurons at 100kHz. The system reacts with a resolution within 1ms to changes of state of digital input channels. The system is set to react to changes in eye-position with a resolution within 4ms. The time-slices, experimental conditions and data are handled by relational databases. This facilitates the construction of new experimental conditions and data analysis. The proposed implementation allows continuous recording without an inter-trial gap for data storage or task management. The implementation can be used to drive electrophysiological experiments of behaving animals and psychophysical studies with human subjects.
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