Brain Imaging & Analysis Center

This page describes how to run CIGAL as a background program for recording physiology while you simultaneously run another program on the same computer to present audiovisual stimuli and record button press responses. This assumes that you understand the issues involved in running two programs simultaneously and have already configured CIGAL and your other program (e.g. Eprime, Presentation, Matlab, etc) to be compatible.

First make sure you are not running any other software that might cause problems. That includes the VideoSwitch control program if you plan to use CIGAL for video switching. It's also a good idea to close web-browsers and e-mail software or anything else you don't need, in order to maximize the amount of memory available to your behavioral software.

You can use CIGAL for background recording in either a single or dual-monitor screen setup. If you use single monitor CIGAL will run in a small window and will not display anything while it is recording data. In the 2-monitor configuration, CIGAL will run full-screen on the secondary display and will show you the physiological signals in real-time while recording. Choosing single or dual-monitor operation makes no difference in the data recorded or output files.
How to set your display to dual-screen mode

Depending on which other program you will be using to present your stimuli you may or may not need to start that program before you change your video display settings to dual-monitor mode. Some programs will only use the main screen, even if multiple screens are available, whereas others will attempt to use both screens if they are started in dual-monitor mode. If your program is confused by the dual-monitor display, you could try starting it in single-monitor mode, then change to dual-monitor mode while it is already running (some programs only check the display settings when they start up). If it's still confused, don't use the dual-monitor configuration.

Whether you start your other program before or after changing the display settings, make sure you know what screen resolution (e.g. 1024×768, 800×600, etc) the program will use when it runs your task. EPrime, for example, will automatically change the video settings when it starts a task if it needs to, which will very likely cause problems if you are trying to share the display with CIGAL (i.e., in dual-monitor mode). This is not a problem if you set the display to the task's screen resolution before you start your program.

It doesn't matter to CIGAL whether you start your other program before or after starting CIGAL, so start the programs in whichever order you find works best. But try to be consistent just in case it makes a difference.

Running CIGAL in background mode

See Also:

Overview of compatibility for running CIGAL in background
Configuring CIGAL for background recording
Configuring EPrime for compatibility with CIGAL in background
Configuring Presentation for compatibility with CIGAL in background
Configuring Matlab for compatibility with CIGAL in background
Running CIGAL physio recording in the background

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