CFS MATLAB toolbox: An experiment builder for continuous flash suppression (CFS) task

Abstract

CFS toolbox is an open-source collection of MATLAB functions that utilizes PsychToolbox-3 (PTB-3). It is designed to allow a researcher to create and run continuous flash suppression experiments using a variety of experimental parameters (i.e., stimulus types and locations, noise characteristics, and experiment window settings). In a CFS experiment, one of the eyes at a time is presented with a dynamically changing noise pattern, while the other eye is concurrently presented with a static target stimulus, such as a Gabor patch. Due to the strong interocular suppression created by the dominant noise pattern mask, the target stimulus is rendered invisible for an extended duration. Very little knowledge of MATLAB is required for using the toolbox; experiments are generated by modifying csv files with the required parameters, and result data are output to text files for further analysis. The open-source code is available on the project page under a Creative Commons License ( http://www.mikkonuutinen.arkku.net/CFS_toolbox/ and https://bitbucket.org/mikkonuutinen/cfs_toolbox ).

Upper nasal hemifield location and nonspatial auditory tones accelerate visual detection during dichoptic viewing

“…Stimulus generation and presentation were controlled using MATLAB with the Psychophysics toolbox 3 extension [ 51 ]. An open-source collection of MATLAB functions that we created for this purpose are described in a previous paper [ 52 ]. Experiments were run on a PC with a Windows 7 operating system.…”

Novel procedure for generating continuous flash suppression: Seurat meets Mondrian

“…To date, CFS has been deployed to learn whether information processing within specific neural substrates survives perceptual suppression of the stimulus that triggers processing in those substrates. The emphasis, in other words, has been on the nature of the suppressed stimulus (e.g., animals vs. tools, upright faces vs. inverted faces, intact objects vs. scrambled images of those objects)—the CFS mask itself is purposely designed to be neutral with respect to specific figural attributes (e.g., consider the CFS toolbox created by Nuutinen, Mustonen, & Häkkinen, 2018). To put it in other words, random arrays of rectangles, ellipses or gratings do not imbue visual meaning to a CFS mask.…”

PsyBuilder: An Open-Source, Cross-Platform Graphical Experiment Builder for Psychtoolbox With Built-In Performance Optimization

“…Coding and debugging can also be time-consuming and error prone even for experienced users. This issue has been widely recognized as a major weakness of Psychtoolbox (e.g., Nuutinen et al, 2018; Schwarzbach, 2011). Indeed, although high timing precision is a key strength of Psychtoolbox, when not programmed well, Psychtoolbox scripts can lead unwittingly to poor timing accuracy (Bridges et al, 2020).…”

“…Great efforts therefore have been spent toward improving its usability and efficiency. These improvements include (a) making a specific task paradigm—for example, continuous flash suppression (Tsuchiya & Koch, 2005)—easier to use by having users modify task parameters in text files with minimal requirement of MATLAB knowledge (Nuutinen et al, 2018); (b) providing a package to help transform user-provided text, image, and sound files to a multimedia slideshow that allows response collections (Schwarzbach, 2011); and (c) offering a modular organizational structure to facilitate code reuse, in which an abstraction interface helps to shorten and simplify the codes needed to run experiments (e.g., the Objective Psychophysics Toolbox; Hartmann & Weisz, 2020). Nevertheless, up until now, a comprehensive solution has been lacking.…”

“…Psychtoolbox (e.g., Nuutinen et al, 2018;Schwarzbach, 2011). Indeed, although high timing precision is a key strength of Psychtoolbox, when not programmed well, Psychtoolbox scripts can lead unwittingly to poor timing accuracy (Bridges et al, 2020).…”