We designed several tasks using Expyriment, a Python library for programming experiments in cognitive science, to study the precision of temporal expectations in the subcortical auditory pathway.
This task can be used for localizing subcortical auditory areas during MRI scanning. Participants are presented with natural sounds interspersed with silent periods and are asked to determine whether each sound has been repeated or not by pressing a button.
This task includes sequential presentation of multiple tone sequences. The timing of at least one of the tones in each sequence is randomly altered and the participants are asked to press a key when they hear this displacement. The displaced tone can occur too early (shorter ISI), too late (longer ISI), or on-time in reference to previously heard timing standards. The timing of the first three tones of the sequence is kept constant (timing standards).