@article {66900,
	title = {pyControl: Open source, Python based, hardware and software for controlling behavioural neuroscience experiments},
	journal = {bioRxiv},
	year = {2021},
	month = {2021 Feb 23},
	abstract = {<p>Laboratory behavioural tasks are an essential research tool. As questions asked of behaviour and brain activity become more sophisticated, the ability to specify and run richly structured tasks becomes more important. An increasing focus on reproducibility also necessitates accurate communication of task logic to other researchers. To these ends we developed pyControl, a system of open source hardware and software for controlling behavioural experiments comprising; a simple yet flexible Python-based syntax for specifying tasks as extended state machines, hardware modules for building behavioural setups, and a graphical user interface designed for efficiently running high throughput experiments on many setups in parallel, all with extensive online documentation. These tools make it quicker, easier and cheaper to implement rich behavioural tasks at scale. As important, pyControl facilitates communication and reproducibility of behavioural experiments through a highly readable task definition syntax and self-documenting features.</p>
},
	doi = {https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.22.432227},
	author = {Thomas Akam and Andy Lustig and James Rowland and Sampath K.T. Kapanaiah and Joan Esteve-Agraz and Mariangela Panniello and Cristina Marquez and Michael Kohl and Dennis K{\"a}tzel and Rui M. Costa and Mark Walton}
}
