Those of you who attended my brief presentation yesterday afternoon will be aware that there are a couple of changes in stimulus delivery hardware for MRI on the horizon.

Stimuls PCs in all areas (MRI, MEG and stim prep):

The current stimulus PCs are end-of-live, and need to be replaced. This will of course mean new graphics cards. While the vast majority of you will probably not be concerned with this change, those of you who do perform lower-level visual control measurements (gamma corrections, etc.) will need to re-calibrate once the change has been made. Other peripherals like the current response devices and audio controllers will remain unchanged.

Top-of-the-range DLP projector with passive 3D colour capability:

Some of our esteemed colleagues were lucky (?) enough to secure funding for the Ferrari of projection systems, a £40k bundle of kit equivalent to the projectors used in commercial cinemas. I summarised yesterday that the functionality of this projection system is, at its basic level, essentially very similar to the system we have in place already, and would thus allow the majority of users to continue their visual stimulus presentation with no or only minor changes. However, for those wanting to use some of the bells and whistles, the projection system has some extra tricks up its sleeve: it can be driven at incredibly high refresh rates (500Hz) and can produce 3d colour projection that can be viewed through passive 3d spectacles (i.e. MRI compatible). It is worth noting that we only have one of these systems, and thus the projector in MEG and MRI would not be identical.

If the projections system were to be installed, it might be optimal to perform this upgrade at the same time as the stimulus PC upgrade.

BEFORE we make any decisions about these changes, we would like to hear any suggestions and concerns you may have so that we can agree a suitable way forward. This is your opportunity to voice your opinions, so please get in touch with me directly.

If anyone would like any further information, would like to test their stimuli on the projector or even a demonstration of the system please feel free to drop me a line.

Thanks,

Andre'

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Andre Gouws York Neuroimaging Centre University of York The Biocentre York Science Park Heslington YO10 5NY

Tel: +44 (0) 1904 435327 Fax: +44 (0) 1904 435356