Recording

The Record menu lets you mark positions on the tangent sceen or record from the simulation or from the microphone input.

Marking the tangent screen

The hot key M will draw the outline of the present stimulus on the tangent screen. Each M will add a new outline.  You can see how this is used above to determine the center of the receptive field. The hot key C will clear the marks.

Recording spikes

The recordings are displayed as spike-triggered stimuli. Each spike triggers the display of the stimulus at the time of the spike. This is called spike-triggered averaging if it is done over a large number of stimuli.

Recorded spikes are displayed with outlined stimuli on the tangent screen, providing a very simple spike-triggered average of the stimuli that cause responses.

Microphone recording

The microphone recording option is for use with the Physiologist's Friend Chip. You can plug in any analog source to the microphone or just record from the built in microphone on your computer. Each time the input rises above a threshold (hard coded) the program records a spike. The input must drop below the threshold minus a hystersis before a new spike can be detected -- this hystersis tries to avoid triggering multiple spikes on a noisy input. This recording method is best suited to digital inputs that are at least 1/4000 second wide.