This works great, except that when I’m writing my programs in my office, I don’t have a joystick, and also sometimes I want to start my programs manually (for demo purposes, or whatever). The pulse from the scanner goes into a little USB adapter doo-hickey, which is plugged into the computer running the stimulus program – the USB box simulates a joystick button-press every time it receives a scanner pulse.

The MRI scanner sends out a TTL-like pulse at the beginning of every functional volume acquisition (or ‘TR’) and this can be used to synchronise with external equipment – in fMRI it’s important to know exactly when your stimuli were presented (relative to the volume acquisition sequence) in order to generate an accurate statistical model. I use it for some of my fMRI stimulus programs. All this can be achieved either with a fairly simple scripting language, or by the use of AutoScriptWriter – a means of ‘recording’ a sequence of inputs that can then be ‘played back’ at much faster rates. macros) which can be triggered with a single key-press, or b) re-map a particular keyboard/mouse/whatever input to act as if it’s any other kind of input.

It allows the user to either a) define a string of mouse/keyboard inputs (i.e. This is a small, free, very flexible and powerful program for Windows which has potentially unlimited usefulness. A brief post about a fantastically useful little utility – AutoHotKey.

Autohotkey macos