VAPP CONSORTIUM

The idea of setting  up the consortium was to allow us to keep VAPP developing perpetually.  Membership fees are used to keep our programmer working on improvements in the software.  VAPP consortium is currently comprised of approximately 20 groups.   The location of these laboratories is listed in our membership area.

The membership fee entitles primary investigators to a lifetime membership, with free upgrades provided additional members are recruited.  There are no site licenses for VAPP. We allow VAPP to be installed on as many PCs  in 'your' lab as you like. Currently we have members who run behavioral experiments using VAPP simultaneously on more than 10 PCs.   This can be a substantial savings over commercially available products. We also provide as much email support to get up and running as we can.

Consortium members are also given free access to the companion programs: Scenario Generator (SG), Addwords, CIRC, and Digitize.   SG and ADDWORDS are often used to efficiently generate VAPP stim files.  CIRC is a companion program that runs on a separate PC connected to VAPP.   CIRC monitors online all event codes, responses, and scanner codes and allows researchers to view all behavioral data in real time.  Viewing subject performance is a valuable asset in psychological experiments.  In particular, CIRC is helpful for ensuring that patients are performing tasks correctly in the MRI scanner.  For example, if CIRC  indicates the fMRI participant is not performing the psychological task correctly, one can stop the scanner and restart - saving valuable scan time.  Digitize is a program that collects raw EEG and associated event and behavioral codes for further EEG or ERP analyses.

To record behavioral data in the MRI scanner we support a commercially available MR compatible fiber-optic response device  http://www.lightwave-medical.com/product.htm
The contact at Cold Switch Technologies/Lightwave Medical is Doug Broadfoot dougb@lightwave-medical.com 

One can also contract with us to make custom modifications to VAPP, with the understanding that the other members of the consortium will receive the new version of VAPP for free. For example, a group in New York just contracted for better video resolution.  VAPP now supports 1024 x 768 video modes.  This new version was beta tested in house and in New York. Upon completion of beta testing the new version of VAPP was released to the rest of the consortium.

Source code can be made available after consultation with Kent Kiehl (kent.kiehl@yale.edu) and Tony Gray (tony_gray@paralynx.com).

Please email Kent Kiehl (kent.kiehl@yale.edu) for current membership fees.