A SOFTWARE PROGRAM FOR CONTROLLING COMPETITIVE STIMULATION TO ELICIT EVENT-RELATED POTENTIALS

The Standard method of eliciting event-related potentials, the ''oddba ll'' paradigm, is insufficient as the sole technique for more differen tiated problems. We therefore developed a more complex yet, in terms o f variation of the stimuli, more flexible, method - competitive stimul ation. This method also employs a two-stimuli paradigm, but uses indep endently delivered identical target and non-target stimuli with spatia l separation. Since this technique requires special control mechanisms for the delivery of the stimuli, in particular with respect to the ob servance of time intervals between consecutive stimuli, we designed a software control program for the stimulation. This program can be run on any PC and permits great flexibility in the choice of the stimulus parameters and peripheral stimulating systems.