USE: An integrative suite for temporally-precise psychophysical experiments in virtual environments for human, nonhuman, and artificially intelligent agents
Authors: Watson Marcus. R. , Benjamin Voloh , Christopher Thomas , Asif Hasan , Thilo Womelsdorf 
Published: October 2018

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1.1

Background

There is a growing interest in complex, active, and immersive behavioral neuroscience tasks. However, the development and control of such tasks present unique challenges.

1.2

New Method

The Unified Suite for Experiments (USE) is an integrated set of hardware and software tools for the design and control of behavioral neuroscience experiments. The software, developed using the Unity video game engine, supports both active tasks in immersive 3D environments and static 2D tasks used in more traditional visual experiments. The custom USE SyncBox hardware, based around an Arduino Mega2560 board, integrates and synchronizes multiple data streams from different pieces of experimental hardware. The suite addresses three key issues with developing cognitive neuroscience experiments in Unity: tight experimental control, accurate sub-ms timing, and accurate gaze target identification.

1.3

Results

USE is a flexible framework to realize experiments, enabling (i) nested control over complex tasks, (ii) flexible use of 3D or 2D scenes and objects, (iii) touchscreen-, button-, joystick- and gaze-based interaction, and (v) complete offline reconstruction of experiments for post-processing and temporal alignment of data streams.

1.4

Comparison with Existing Methods

Most existing experiment-creation tools are not designed to support the development of video-game-like tasks. Those that do use older or less popular video game engines as their base, and are not as feature-rich or enable as precise control over timing as USE.

1.5

Conclusions

USE provides an integrated, open source framework for a wide variety of active behavioral neuroscience experiments using human and nonhuman participants, and artificially-intelligent agents.

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Glossary

Active task: Experimental tasks which involve some combination of realistic, usually moving, stimuli, continuous opportunities for action, ecologically valid tasks, complex behaviours, etc. Here, they are contrasted with static tasks (see below)

Arduino: A multi-purpose generic micro-processor, here used to control inter-device communication and time synchronization.

Raycast: A game-engine method that sends a vector between two points in a virtual three-dimensional environment, and returns the first object in that environment it hits. Often used to determine if a character in a game can see or shoot another character.

State Machine (also Finite State Machine): A way of conceptualizing and implementing control in software, such that at any one moment the software is in one, and only one, state. In hierarchical state machines, as used in the present software suite, these can be organized into different levels, such that each level can only be in one state, but a state can pass control to a lower level.

Static task: Experimental tasks like those traditionally used in the cognitive neurosciences. Simple, usually stationary, stimuli, limited opportunities for action, simple behaviours, etc. Here, they are contrasted with active tasks (see above).

Unity: One of the most popular video game engines. Freely available.

Video game engine: A software development kit designed to handle many of the common issues involved in creating video games, such as interfacing with controllers, simulating physical collisions and lighting, etc.