Dr. Nicholas A. Del Grosso

PhD Thesis

Vestibular influence on spatial representation in entorhino-hippocampal system

Few vision stimulus software packages and libraries offer support to cognitive scientists for the presentation of 3D stimuli. We present here a free, open source Python 3D graphics package called Ratcave that allows scientists to load, display, and transform 3D stimuli created in 3D modeling software. This package makes 3D programming intuitive to new users by providing 3D graphics engine concepts that can be manipulated using an interface similar to existing 2D stimulus packages. In addition, the use of modern OpenGL constructs
by Ratcave helps scientists create fast, hardware-accelerated dynamic stimuli using the same intuitive high-level, lightweight interface. Because Ratcave supplements, rather than replaces, existing Python stimulus packages, scientists can continue to use their preferred libraries by simply adding Ratcave graphics to their existing experiments. We hope this tool will be useful both as a stimulus package and as an example of how tightly-focused libraries can add quality to the existing scientific open-source software ecosystem.

Publication

Del Grosso NA and Sirota A (2019) Ratcave: A 3D Graphics Python Package for Cognitive Psychology Experiments. Behavior research methods.  and Sirota A (2019) Ratcave: A 3D Graphics Python Package for Cognitive Psychology Experiments. Behavior research methods.