Once the user has designed an experimental design suitable to their study hypothesis, the next step is to present stimuli to the participant to acquire task related data.There are a number of stimulus presentation software available, open source and at cost (see figure 3 for a list of commonly used options). These software make stimulus presentation timed, and offer a range of capabilities, such as recording participant response time or triggering external devices. Most offer some form of a GUI, as well as options for coding scripts. They have varied options for triggering and software support.

Figure 3 – An inexhaustive list of stimulus presentation software and their capabilities. We highly recommend PsychoPy.

Stimulus Presentation Software - NIRStim

NIRStim is a NIRx software that integrates and is  automatically  downloaded  with  NIRstar. NIRStim  sends   triggers   to   NIRStar   with   a shared variable. It is also capable of sending out  triggers  with  a  parallel  port  or  Cedrus StimTracker,  so  integration  with  Aurora  is possible  (NIRStim  is  NOT  compatible  with  a c-pod or  LSL).  

NIRStim  comes  with  a  sample fingertapping  experiment.  It  can  support text,  sounds  and  pictures,  and  is  ideal  for simple  experiments –overall,  its  capabilities are  limited,  and  users  looking  to  implement more  complex paradigms should  look into other options.