Operation

After describing the individual components and layout of Maestro's user interface, this chapter focuses on how to use the application to design experiments, then run those experiments and monitor the data collected. New users are encourage to read through the following sections carefully before trying to use the program, while veteran users can return to them as needed for a refresher on a particular functional feature or instructions on how to use specific elements of the user interface.

• • The User Interface. A brief description of the user interface's layout, individual components and their functions. Menu/toolbar commands. Customizing the layout of the UI.

  • Designing Experiments. How experiments are defined in Maestro's "experiment document". The document object tree. The various building blocks of an experiment: targets, channel configurations, perturbations, trials, and stimulus runs. Detailed descriptions of the defining parameters for each object class. How to add/delete/rename/modify objects using the document tree and the various editor panels in the UI's main client area.

  • Scripting Experiments in Matlab. In some experimental scenarios, it is important to be able to quickly generate a set of trials tailored to the measured response characteristics of a currently acquired neural unit. In this case, manually defining the trials in the UI may take too long. This page describes a function which can be called from within a user-developed Matlab script to generate a plain-text experiment document that can then be imported by Maestro.

  • Running Experiments. The docking "mode control panel" and its contents in the four distinct operational modes: Idle, Trial, Continuous, and Test. Details on how the various widgets in the mode control panel tabs are used to configure various application settings and control experimental protocols.

  • Monitoring Experiments. Describes additional docking panels that display data collected or summarize progress while the experiment is running.