PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jai Bhagat
AU  - Miles J. Wells
AU  - Andrew Peters
AU  - Kenneth D Harris
AU  - Matteo Carandini
AU  - Christopher P Burgess
TI  - Rigbox: an Open-Source Toolbox for Probing Neurons and Behavior
AID  - 10.1101/672204
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 672204
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/10/04/672204.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/10/04/672204.full
AB  - 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 (github.com/cortex-lab/Rigbox). Rigbox simplifies hardware I/O, synchronizes data streams 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 two interactive examples: a human psychophysics experiment, and the game of Pong. We give an overview of the other packages 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.