EegscoreNEW instructions

Start Matlab, type eegscoreNEW at the prompt. The following open File dialog box appears (without the filenames):

Click on the box in the upper left labeled ‘EEG Data .DAT File To Read From:’ and a standard open file dialog will appear listing the choices of .DAT files to open. Choose one and it will be listed to the right of the upper left box and the associated _CFG and .MASK files with the same basename as the .DAT file will automatically be chosen and listed appropriately. If for some reason these two files have a different basename then click the appropriate button and choose the correct files.

Next a dialog box will appear asking whether to create a default, open an existing, or change an existing configuration file:

If this is the first time working with a particular type of .DAT file then choose ‘Create default v1 config file’ which will open eegscoreNEW with default settings for the file. If you have previously worked with this type of file and have a configuration file set up the way you want then click the middle button, choose that file and it will be left essentially unchanged at the end of the scoring session. If you have an existing configuration file that you want to modify then choose the right button and any changes made during the session will be saved upon exiting eegscoreNEW.

The eegscoreNEW main window should open now as shown below:

Vertical scales for channel plots are located at alternating ends of the plots and the time scale for all plots is located beneath the bottom plot. These scales can be adjusted by clicking on the YOut/YIn and XIn/XOut buttons respectively. The +Chan and –Chan buttons control the number of channels displayed (up to a maximum of 32). Chan settings can be used to customize individual channels and how they are displayed. The Files button (identical to menu item Files->New) can be used to bring up the EEGSCORE Files dialog (shown above) where the current .MASK file can be saved and a new .DAT file opened. The Exit button (identical to menu item Files->Exit) can be used to exit from eegscoreNEW. Beneath the time scale is the time slider control which is used to scroll through the time course of the record. Clicking in the time slider bar next to the slider will scroll the window by one screen width while clicking on a slider arrow will scroll the screen approximately three-quarters of a screen width. The slider bar can also be dragged for rapid scrolling. Direct movement to the next or previous epoch where at least one channel has bad data can be accomplished by clicking on the PrevBad/NextBad buttons at the top right of the plots. The vertical slider on the left side of the window performs a similar function for scrolling through channels with the arrows enabling movement by one channel at a time and clicking in the slider scrolling to the next window full of channels.

Individual channel settings can be made by clicking on the Chan setting button which brings up the following dialog:

Channel settings can be used to name channels; to set whether a particular channel should be displayed (Visible); whether to display it as a fixed channel at the bottom of the display (e.g. for EOG or event channels); to change the order in which the channels are displayed; and to change the range/offset for a particular channel (very useful for special channels with ranges that don’t match well with the majority of channels). These channel settings are stored in the configuration file so that once a suitable setup is reached, it can be used for all similar .DAT files. Below is an example setup for eight channel monkey data:

This is the same data set as shown above but here channels 7 (ECG) and 8 (Trigger) have been named and that their data are now plotted using the range and offsets set up in the Channel Settings dialog.

Data can be marked bad by dragging across the time period and channels while holding down the left mouse button. This brings up the Editing Options window:

where choices can be made as to whether to mark the selection OK or Bad, apply it to all or selected time/channels. Making the selection by dragging with the right mouse button held down will bring up the Editing Options dialog with the OK button already selected (mark bad = select with left mouse; mark good = select with right mouse button). On PC and Unix versions of Matlab the <Enter> key can be pressed rather than clicking on the Do It! Button. So if you don’t need to change any of the values in the Editing Options window you can select and hit <Enter>. The text window labeled Frequency is provided as a means of estimating frequencies of waveforms in the record by selecting a time interval corresponding to an integral number of peaks in the signal. After an edit has been made a button labeled ‘UNDO’ appears under the chan settings button which can be clicked to undo the edit.

The menu bar provides access to several useful functions. Under the File menu are the Print command which will print the eegscoreNEW window, the New command which is the same as the Files button described above, and the Exit command which will end the eegscoring session. Under the Options menu item are the Fixed Chan Display command which opens a dialog for choosing a color in which to display the fixed channels at the bottom of the window and the Set Event Channel command which opens a dialog requesting input of the event channel number to use as the active event channel. When a file is opened which contains one or more event channels two new buttons appear below the bottom channel in line with the PrevBad/NextBad buttons. These buttons called PrevEvent/NextEvent cause time scrolling to the previous or next event on the active event channel. Under the Calculate menu bar item is the NumGoodWins commands which will calculate the number of good 1.0 second 0.5 second overlap windows in the data. Help on the various eegscoreNEW functions can be found under the Help menu item.