Stimulus Onset Hub: An open-source, low latency, and opto-isolated trigger box for neuroscientific research replicability and beyond.

Abstract

There is currently a replication crisis in many fields of neuroscience and psychology, with some estimates claiming up to 64% of research in psychological science is not reproducible. Three common culprits which have been suspected to cause the failure to replicate such studies are small sample sizes, "hypothesizing after the results are known," and "p-hacking." Here, we introduce accurate stimulus timing as an additional possibility. Accurate stimulus onset timing is critical to almost all psychophysical research. Auditory, visual, or manual response time stimulus onsets are typically sent through wires to various machines that record data such as: eye gaze positions, electroencephalography, stereo electroencephalography, and electrocorticography. These stimulus onsets are collated and analyzed according to experimental condition. If there is variability in the temporal accuracy of the delivery of these onsets to external systems, the quality of the resulting data and scientific analyses will degrade. Here, we describe an approximately $200 Arduino based system and associated open-source codebase which achieved a 5.34 microsecond delay from the inputs to the outputs while electrically opto-isolating the connected external systems. Using an oscilloscope, the device is configurable for different environmental conditions particular to each laboratory (e.g. light sensor type, screen type, speaker type, stimulus type, temperature, etc). This low-cost open-source project delivered electrically isolated stimulus onset Transistor-Transistor Logic triggers with a median precision of 5.34 microseconds and was successfully tested with 7 different external systems that record eye and neurological data.