Hardware and Software Requirements

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The core of this book is a large set of data processing and analysis exercises. They are designed to run on your own computer using two free, open source Matlab toolboxes, EEGLAB and ERPLAB. However, you will need a Matlab license to run these toolboxes. Check with your institution’s Information Technology office to see if they provide free or reduced-cost Matlab licenses. It may also be possible for you to purchase a student license. In particular, you will need:

Matlab version 2017a or higher
- The Signal Processing Toolbox is required. If you don't have it, contact your institution's IT support department for assistance.
- The Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox is recommended.
- To see what toolboxes are already installed in Matlab, type ver on the Matlab command line.
- Some parts of the software will run under Octave, a free Matlab simulator. However, Octave will not run the graphical user interface, which is necessary for most of the exercises. You should therefore use Matlab rather than Octave.
EEGLAB version 2022.0 or higher (see Chapter 1 for installation instructions)
ERPLAB version 9.0 or higher (see Chapter 1 for installation instructions)

EEGLAB and ERPLAB will run on any reasonably recent version of Mac OS, Windows, or Linux. These packages are designed for professional users, and they work best on a computer with a lot of RAM, a large hard drive, and a high-resolution external monitor. However, they will function adequately on a midrange laptop. Absolute minimum specifications are:

4 MB RAM (but 8 MB will work much better)
A screen height of at least 720 pixels (but 1080p or higher will work much better)
Read and write permission in the folder used to store the EEGLAB and ERPLAB code