Tübingen, Germany: September 11-12th, 2015

Important notes

• Working with MEG/EEG recordings involves a lot of computational resources and large display windows. Therefore we recommend that you bring a laptop with a decent processing capacity, 4Gb RAM, a 64bit operating system, and a screen larger than 13".

• We strongly discourage the use of any Windows 32bit computer. The limitations of the memory management may result in lots of "Out of memory" errors that will make the training difficult to follow.

• You would also add to your comfort by bringing an external mouse. Most of the manipulations are done with the mouse, and some involve an intensive use of the scrolling operation. A mouse wheel or the "two-finger move" on MacBooks are perfect for this, but this operation is not always easy to perform on some laptops.

• Don't forget your power adapter!

Installation instructions

• Before coming to the workshop, you need to download the software and the tutorial dataset from the Brainstorm website (>300Mb). To streamline troubleshooting during the session, please save all the downloaded files on your Desktop.

• From the Brainstorm Download page, log in or create a Brainstorm account (registration is free)

• Download the following files to your Desktop folder:

  • Brainstorm software: brainstorm_YYMMDD.zip (62 Mb)

  • Tutorial dataset: sample_auditory.zip (1045 Mb)

• If you already have Brainstorm, make sure that the version was released after August 31st. You can update brainstorm from the GUI under the help tap.

• Unzip the two downloaded files on your deskstop
• Delete the zip files

• Create a folder "brainstorm_db" on your Desktop folder

• Final check: you should have now 3 folders on your desktop:

  • brainstorm3: Program folder, with the Matlab source code and the compiled executable

  • brainstorm_db: Brainstorm database (empty)

  • sample_workshop_fullday: Example dataset used during the training session

• Run Brainstorm, to make sure it works correctly on your computer (read the following section)

Running Brainstorm for the first time

1. Start Matlab
2. Do NOT add brainstorm3 folder to your Matlab path: this will be done automatically
3. Go to the brainstorm3 folder
4. Type "brainstorm" in the command window
5. When asked for the Brainstorm database folder, pick the "brainstorm_db" you have just created

Getting ready for the workshop

• In order to make sure that Brainstorm works properly and to get more familiar with the software, we recommend that you read and follow at least the first two online tutorials:
• Brainstorm architecture
• First steps

Troubleshooting

• For any technical problem, please contact Esther Florin ( esther.florin@uk-koeln.de )